Blakes7 April 2001

blakes7@lists.lysator.liu.se

70 participants
295 discussions

Fwd: Re: [B7L] Terry Nation as Writer
by Kanna Ophelia 05 Apr '01

05 Apr '01

Aaargh! Been doing it again... Apologies to everyone whose been recieving personal copies of my messages. I've become lazily used to yahoogroups, where the default is reply to list... Have to reset my stubborn brain. Reposting: > > (And don't forget that Soolin later appeared with little apparent purpose > > other than to soup up the gun-toting blonde index -- her character hardly > > develops very much for episode after episode, probably till 'Warlord'.) > > Hey hey hey - is there something wrong with that? Beautiful gun-toting blondes > rock my world! <g> > > I really, really wish Soolin had more to do. But I do think she's a nice > couterpoint to Avon - someohow, all that cool cynicism coming from someone who > is young, pretty and above all female seems to change its meaning. And, also, > she draws attention to how erratic he's become in contrast to S1 Avon - my > favourite example is in Asassin, where the men are running around with > testosterone pumping and Soolin just flops down on her shapely bottom and > *thinks* her way through. > > I really wish she *had* kissed Piri, though. :) > > 'Tis about time I resurrected the Temple of our underutilised, but definitely > divine, Golden Goddess, methinks. Seriously, her beauty aside, she really does > fascinate me, she carries the moral detachment that peeks through B7 at times > to another level. > > XXX > Kanna-Ophelia > --------------------------------------------- > This message was sent using One.Net's Mail Man. > http://mailman.one.net.au --------------------------------------------- This message was sent using One.Net's Mail Man. http://mailman.one.net.au

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surveillance...cont..
by Nathan Hook 05 Apr '01

05 Apr '01

I heard a conspiracy theory which suggested that the numbers on the bottom of your passport are secured electronically and reveal a lot of information about you. The chap who touted this theory said an associate in australia said I can find anything about you with those numbers and det out to prove it. aparently using the internet and the apropriate know how, he was able to gather all sorts of sensitive personal information about this chap. The again, this has reminded me how convenient the electronic age is for such tasks. A documentary article here in NZ asked several people off the street whether they'd like to be guinea pigs in a wee experiment...they'd give their name and the current affairs show, and with the use of a private investigator, the show would track them down. well, it took only minutes really. the investigator came knocking at the door, much to the surprise of the person with an unlisted phone number and showed what he'd collected on them from electronic data. it was quite a shock. earnings, tax files, etce etc. it was all there. SF is here already. Nathan, Nothings so difficult as a beginning/ In poesy, unless perhaps the end. Byron. ------------------------------------------------------------ Free, BeOS-friendly email accounts: http://BeMail.org/ Free Peepshow - http://twinfusion.com/comic/peep/

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RE: Sex & evangelism (moving back to B7)
by Tavia 05 Apr '01

05 Apr '01

Calle: >Could you please either bring this back on-topic Is there any evidence that marriage was common under Federation law? There are a few couples that are generally referred to by fen as being married but are not in fact referred to as such on screen as far as I can recall (Vena and Muller, Tel Varon and Maja), but the only certain example I can think of is Sula and Chesku. It's a fairly common fanfic notion that marriage is reserved for the aristocracy. Perhaps there is therefore little concept of adultery? Tavia

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Mission to Destiny
by Tavia 04 Apr '01

04 Apr '01

As I picked this, I felt it my duty to watch it. But then I picked it as the worst Terry Nation episode I could come up with, and I stand by that assessment. (I won't read Fiona's MtD expose' which I note has arrived as I was composing this...) First season B7 (in which all episodes were written by Nation) strikes me sometimes as a set of experiments in writing in different styles/genres. One can almost imagine Nation sitting down and thinking well, 13 episodes, Robin Hood in space, when was the deadline, god, last week... what cliche's can I rehash... and raiding the cupboard of action/adventure (SLD, Project Avalon), Star Trek (Duel, Deliverance), evil/mad scientist-style sf (The Web, Orac) &c &c before finally pulling out the Agatha Christie.... So we're treated to vintage detective fiction in the Poirot style -- mysterious series of murders, closed system crime, outsiders happen by and get pulled in to solve the mystery, events cast suspicion on each member of the group in turn, before finally plot device clue reveals the answer .... All very well, but the tension here is entirely lacking because there's no inherent threat to the crew of the Liberator. (The external tension devices [dark corridors, music track] are all very well but can't really amplify what just isn't there in the first place.) I'm not even convinced that the 'spacisation' of detective fic would have been novel at the time -- weren't there some Asimov novels that took this idea (eg The Caves of Steel, published 1954)? The original intent here was to discuss Terry Nation's writing, so we can safely ignore one of the worst aspects of the episode ... the terrible acting by the extras (with their budget they could either hire one or two extras who could act or 8 who, in the main, couldn't). What we can't ignore is the succession of lame plot devices, not to mention gaping plot holes (how does Liberator get back to the Ortega without going through the meteor storm?, why does Avon confront a known murderer without a single thought as to the consequences?), and rather odd characterisation (Blake destroying the Ortega). And a couple of wibbles. The sub-light-restricted Ortega will take 5 months to get to Destiny, while Liberator, the fastest ship in space, will take 4 days -- assuming months are earth length that's only a 40-fold difference, which doesn't seem to me to be enough. There seemed to me to be a strong implication that the fungus from Hell might be some kind of Federation colonisation device, which in view of later episodes (Children of Auron, say) seems rather plausible. In which case, there's almost certainly a quick and cheap way of killing the fungus once the existing colonists have been driven away/died. This type of possibility would seem to make for a much more interesting/pointful episode than watching Avon striding around with his hands behind his back imitating Poirot... So... sloppy hack writing ? Definitely. Deep meaning ? None that I can see. Entertaining ? Not really. Tavia

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Re: [B7L] More thoughts on Mellanby
by Marian de Haan 04 Apr '01

04 Apr '01

Fiona wrote: >True, plots do tend to get advanced in adventure stories by random acts of carelessness :). But as I did say, this act wouldn't have been so but for Servalan deciding to take a desperate chance. And she was in a desperate situation-- seducing Avon hadn't worked, the Mellanbys weren't likely to sympathise with her and the only apparent way of getting off the planet was by blackmailing Avon.< I think we can assume Avon to be intelligent enough to work that out. So why would he want to give Servalan the opportunity to blackmail him? > Hm, but let's look at it another way. Avon, as it stands, has a choice of leaving Orac in the workroom or keeping it with him wherever he's sleeping. Now, if he suspects that Servalan is after Orac, to keep Orac with him would mean that he would spend a sleepless night,< He could order Orac to shrink and put it under his pillow. :-) Or he could have rigged up some sort of burgler alarm in his bedroom. (And we don't know whether his room could be locked or not.) He could even have taken Orac out of its casing and taken it with him to his room, leaving the casing for Servalan to steal. :-) It would not have been a long sleep anyway, Avon mentiones Liberator being a few hours away. And he says he could do with a *rest*, which not necessarily means that he's planning to sleep. Maybe he just has enough of Mellanby's company and longs for a bit of privacy, using his need for a rest as an excuse. :-) >:)! But Avon thinks in logical, rational terms-- he is trying to outcalculate Servalan, and he's nearly right. He couldn't have foreseen either the gun being left out or Mellanby being around to be shot (had Mellanby not been there she would likely have hid Orac and used it to bargain with); he's a computer technician, not a psychostrategist.< But as you say, he can think in logical, rational terms. :-) That's exactly why I find it so hard to credit this utter stupidity. Why would he want to make it easy for Servalan? Suppose you're in a hotel,carrying a fortune in your suitcase. If you find your biggest enemy also staying there and if that enemy tells you that he knows about the fortune and wants to take it from you, would you then leave the suitcase in the lounge or take it with you to your room? Sorry, but I still think it's sloppy writing. :-) Marian

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Re: [B7L] Mission to Destiny
by J MacQueen 04 Apr '01

04 Apr '01

>From: "Fiona Moore" <nydersdyner(a)yahoo.co.uk> >as it is, it's directed by the man who directed "Timelash," Pennant Roberts? Not game to ask what you think of the other DW episodes he directed <grin> Then again, it seems Roberts didn't think much of the script for Timelash, so maybe he didn't think much of the script for Mission to Destiny either (anyone know if that's the case?). Yes, I know, the next question is why didn't he make the best of it. If a director has that much contempt for a script, why inflict it on us? Damn, I liked Mission to Destiny. I'll be going home for Easter, so I'll have to watch it again then to see if I can see what others don't like what they see. Um, I'll rephrase that later... Regards Joanne (who remains amused by Timelash, regardless) _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

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Re: [B7L] Mission to Destiny
by Tavia 04 Apr '01

04 Apr '01

Fiona wrote: >I think perhaps a little too much emphasis has gotten placed, over the >years, on the famous story of Nation writing a script to a tight deadline, >then getting Boucher to do the edit while he goes away and works on the next >one I wasn't thinking so much of that as the everyday realities of writing for money and to deadlines, which has paid for my internet access for several years now.... >However, from what I've heard, the editing was >not so much Boucher having to rewrite the story, as him having to edit down >the scenes which contained concepts they couldn't afford to realise (huge >crowd scenes, pitched space battles etc) into something they could. I'm already looking forward to hearing Boucher speak at Redemption 03. >the interesting bit is not in the >solving of the mystery so much as in the watching of all the characters but >Avon come up with convoluted rationalisations. And I thought that was just filler... Certainly that was how the 'now let's search the ship for stowaways' came over to me. In fact, one of the real weaknesses of MtD was that *so much* of the episode just felt like repetitive filler. Lots of walking around dim corridors, lots of scenes with people fixing the unfixable, some very very bland dialogue... The whole thing could easily have been done in 20 minutes, and indeed the episode might have worked ok if it had been interlaced with a parallel plot (a la Bounty). >Technical point: an "extra" is a nonspeaking role; these are "supporting >actors." I stand corrected. (And won't be intimidated that easily...!) >The implication in the Blake and Vila exchange: "We've got to get back to >them!" "Now I *know* I don't feel very well..." is that it did. Yes, but why didn't it damage the ship, as the energy is too drained to maintain the force wall and main drive simultaneously? >Because, as you point out, the story is a Christie pastiche. And for it to >work as a pastiche, it has to include Christie elements, chief among which >is unfortunately the "now I've brought you all together to inform you that >the murderer is one of you..." scene (sorry, I don't much care for >Christie). Hence that scene. But at least Poirot usually did it accompanied by an armed sidekick... (No, I'm not that fond of Christie either.) >Interesting, that's a reading I missed. At this stage in the series, though, >it sounds like supposition-- going back through the script I can't find any >implication that this is so. It's just the conjunction of non-aligned, Federation have made approaches and threatened, then suddenly from nowhere deadly blight appears, in adjacent speeches. The story could easily have been developed that way. >They did make that episode though, it was called "Killer" :). 'Killer' was a slightly different premise, and the threat was not from the Federation. But a high proportion of the plots/themes end up repeating: certain MtD elements are rehashed in 'Assassin' for example. Tavia

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Re: [B7L] Mission to Destiny (was Terry Nation as Writer)
by Tavia 04 Apr '01

04 Apr '01

Fiona wrote: >the correct explanation, as presented by Avon, >turns out to be actually quite simple. This is of course one obvious way in which the plot differs from archetypal Poirot closed-system crime (say 'Murder on the Orient Express'). >Finally, this theme is pointed up by two quotes, My favourite quotation was: AVON: Try greed. It's usually reliable. >Occam's Razor. When faced with a mystery, it's the >simple explanation, the one that's staring you in the face, that usually >does the trick; the convoluted one is likely to send you running around in >circles and concocting danger where there is none. Indeed. My Occam's Razor tells me that Nation was a sloppy hack writer thinking of his pay cheque... [smile] Tavia

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Re: [B7L] More thoughts on Mellanby
by Fiona Moore 04 Apr '01

04 Apr '01

>From: "Marian de Haan" <maya(a)multiweb.nl> > >>It's him leaving Orac for Servalan to grab in the first place that I find >hard to credit.<< > > > >To be fair, she wouldn't have had a go at all if Mellanby (or Dayna?) >hadn't left the gun lying around in the first place.< > >Still, one would expect someone with Avon's survival instinct to want to >keep his only means for returning to Liberator with him at all times, >especially when his enemy is around. All the more since Servalan has told >him that she's after Orac. (This is what I meant by sloppy writing :-) ) Hm, but let's look at it another way. Avon, as it stands, has a choice of leaving Orac in the workroom or keeping it with him wherever he's sleeping. Now, if he suspects that Servalan is after Orac, to keep Orac with him would mean that he would spend a sleepless night, as he could not be unaware that if he were guarding Orac, Servalan would likely kill him while he slept to take it. If he leaves it in the workroom, he runs the risk of her stealing it, but at least he will be alive to chase her afterwards. Remember, also, that Orac is useless to Servalan as things stand except as a bargaining chip-- Avon has Orac's key, so Orac can't do anything; even if she had the key, Avon has his bracelet, so she can't use it to get off Sarran. The only thing she can use it for, as she says, is to bargain with. Furthermore, Avon probably doesn't expect her to try anything. The area around Chez Mellanby is full of homicidal Sarrans, and she is as unfamiliar with the planet as he is. Without a gun, she is unlikely to run the risk of stealing Orac-- it makes more sense just to play along and hope. However, the fact that one of the Mellanbys leaves a gun lying around changes the balance of power, and she seizes the opportunity. It's a risky plan; by killing Mellanby (which she has no choice but to do-- it's unlikely that she expects to find him there, since he was only waiting up since Lauren wasn't back) she puts herself in the position of having to leave the base, and even with the gun the locals do catch her and string her up. Avon is likely to be aware that any plan she could think up would be dependent on luck and therefore easy to foil. So there's little reason for Avon to take Orac to bed with him :), and in fact a few good reasons not to. See-- not sloppy at all :). >his words might be a comfort to Dayna (although a consolation attempt is >rather out of character for Avon--< > >Not if he sees it as the quickest way to get Dayna to help him find >Servalan. But really, it works against that, since she's likely to want sympathy not sarcasm-- but then as you say, compassion was never Avon's forte. Fiona The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Bitter and twisted at http://nyder.r67.net _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com

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Re: [B7L] More thoughts on Mellanby
by Fiona Moore 04 Apr '01

04 Apr '01

>From: "Marian de Haan" <maya(a)multiweb.nl> >Fiona wrote: > >True, plots do tend to get advanced in adventure stories by random acts of >carelessness :). But as I did say, this act wouldn't have been so but for >Servalan deciding to take a desperate chance. And she was in a desperate >situation-- seducing Avon hadn't worked, the Mellanbys weren't likely to >sympathise with her and the only apparent way of getting off the planet was >by blackmailing Avon.< > >I think we can assume Avon to be intelligent enough to work that out. Evidently not-- he's human, after all, and makes mistakes before and makes them again afterwards. Whatever their faults, neither Terry Nation nor Chris Boucher can be accused of not knowing their own character :). > So >why would he want to give Servalan the opportunity to blackmail him? Well, he doesn't. He leaves Orac in the main room of the house, knowing that Mellanby is also in that same room with a gun and no great fondness for Servalan. He himself, as you point out, is just resting, and only for a short while. All perfectly safe, until Servalan gets a gun. >He could order Orac to shrink and put it under his pillow. :-) And risk having it suddenly reexpand under him :)? Or, as I said, of Servalan coming in and killing him to get it? > Or he could >have rigged up some sort of burgler alarm in his bedroom. (And we don't >know whether his room could be locked or not.) And by the same token, we don't know whether it was *possible* for him to rig up a burglar alarm. And why bother-- he'll be gone in a few hours. >Orac out of its casing and taken it with him to his room, leaving the casing >for Servalan to steal. :-) It wouldn't have taken her long to work out that the casing was empty... >It would not have been a long sleep anyway, Avon mentiones Liberator being a >few hours away. And he says he could do with a *rest*, which not >necessarily means that he's planning to sleep. Mellanby does say he'll wake him up in plenty of time... but you're right. That is what Avon says. And when he runs into the room, he's fully dressed, boots and all. >But as you say, he can think in logical, rational terms. :-) That's exactly >why I find it so hard to credit this utter stupidity. Why would he want to >make it easy for Servalan? But he doesn't, and it isn't stupid. As I said, Avon thinks logically. Servalan, however, doesn't only think logically, she thinks laterally. So Avon thinks, "Mellanby's there, she has no gun, she doesn't know the planet-- she may want Orac but she's not going to take a stupid risk." Servalan, meanwhile, gets hold of a gun and evens the odds. >Suppose you're in a hotel,carrying a fortune in your suitcase. If you find >your biggest enemy also staying there and if that enemy tells you that he >knows about the fortune and wants to take it from you, would you then leave >the suitcase in the lounge or take it with you to your room? But, to use that analogy, since Mellanby was there with a gun and he himself was only a room away, he wasn't leaving the fortune in the lounge, he was leaving it in the safe-- which is generally what people do if they're in a hotel with a fortune in their suitcases, as leaving it in your room runs a risk of having people break in and do you personally some damage while they're nicking it. Remember, too, that Orac without the key is like the black gold in Gold-- in and of itself totally worthless. Servalan can't use it to teleport to Liberator without a bracelet, and she can't use it at all without a key. Its only function for her is as a bargaining chip when dealing with Avon, for whom it *is* useful. So it could only be worth her while having a go at it if she had the opportunity to hide it somewhere and refuse to bring it back unless he agrees to her terms-- which she'd find it hard to do if it was her unarmed versus Avon and the Mellanbys. >Sorry, but I still think it's sloppy writing. :-) Sorry, but I don't :). Fiona The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Serious lateral thinking at http://nyder.r67.net _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com

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Blakes7 April 2001