Blakes7 May 2001

blakes7@lists.lysator.liu.se

84 participants
897 discussions

H&H: Avon
by Sally Manton 30 May '01

30 May '01

Susan Beth wrote: <'Behind his insolent stare lies a disappointed idealist - a man who wants to believe in honor and integrity, he cannot quite do so.> Very much a popular view of Avon, this, an integral part of the Avon-Blake discussion and his view of Fearless Leader (with the obvious implications for Gauda Prime). The irony IMO being that Avon *did* learn to believe, just for once, and far more than he himself realised, and he was totally inexperienced in the art of believing better of people than was *absolutely* necessary; if he hadn't believed in Blake, he wouldn't have reacted nearly so violently when that belief was threatened. <If he does give his word - a rare occurrence! - he keeps it.'> "Oh, and I'm a man of my word. In the end, that's all there is, really." And the kamikaze defence of Star One. I'd have *loved* to be a fly on the wall for the scene that led to that promise ... _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

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H&H: Blake
by Sally Manton 30 May '01

30 May '01

Susan Beth wrote: <Blake is 'The Chief.' <snip> He rarely takes time to build consensus or garner support - not unless he is forced to in order to achieve his goals. He expects people to line up and follow his directives unquestioningly.'> Oh dear of dear oh dear ... well, I wouldn't say 'unquestioningly', he's not that deaf :-) but I would agree that part of the reason this unruly crew *do* what he wants is his unspoken faith that they will (yes, even Avon. Time Squad, anyone?) <'His powerful personality often forces others to align themselves with his plan, and he usually wins the day even if all the details have not been pinned down and discussed.'> <chortle> Time Squad *again*, anyone? Dear I love that episode ... Actually, there are lightly sprinkled indicators that the crew do discuss everything more than is normally assumed (the comfortable round-table discussion in Weapon, the open shock that he *has* been keeping plans from them in Pressure Point, Vila's "You've always explained, given us reasons for things," from Voice). I think Jenna's "You lead. We don't take commands," is very close to the truth; Blake gets his own way, but they make him work for it (for instance, Gan disagrees strongly with Blake's plans in both Shadow and Pressure Point, but Blake talks him round :-)). But the point is valid, that they tend, albeit neither quietly nor always cheerfully, to go with his flow whether the whole thing's been thrashed out or not. I recently read a story (hi, Predatrix!!) where Blake, shepherding them all off for a rest, was reminded of the legend of the man who tried to herd cats and I just thought that metaphor was sooooooo perfect. <'Stubborn - The CHIEF sometimes becomes so focused on the mission before him that he loses track of when a cause is lost. Obstinate to a fault, even when someone points out that the battle is over, he continues to fight.'> Yes, well it was a good idea *sometimes* (the end of Redemption). I love the bit in Spacefall: BLAKE: [Sighs] It was my fault. AVON: We know. BLAKE: I'll try and do better next time. Lucky Avon didn't have a hand free, or he'd have thumped the irrepressible bastard ... _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

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Re: [B7L] Re: Zine lists coming up
by Tavia 29 May '01

29 May '01

Sarah kindly wrote: >Anyway, feel free to play with the raw data if you like. Now how could I resist such an invitation... There have been a total of more than 800 all-Blake's 7 fiction zines produced. Zine production peaked in 1988, with a total of 73 zines, and has since trailed off appreciably: (Numbers are average per year) 1978--1979: 14 1980--1984: 31 1985--1989: 55 1990--1994: 36 1995--1999: 21 2000--2001: 9 No date avail: 54 (total) The vast majority of zines produced (82%) are gen, according to Sarah's classification, with 8% het adult, 9% slash and 2% mixed (gen plus adult/slash). Considering only 'adult' zines, there does seem to have been a partial switch from mainly het adult (1970s and early 1980s) towards mainly slash zines (especially early to mid-1990s), though genzines dominate throughout. Like all zines, the annual production of both het adult zines and slash zines has decreased since the late 1980s. However the rate of decline, especially for slash zines, has been less rapid than for genzines, and so they are currently increasing as a proportion of the total. Too few mixed zines have been produced to assess. A few summary graphs are at the below address, and I'll forward my spreadsheet (MS Excel) to anyone interested. http://www.viragene.com/zinesumm.htm Tavia

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Geography (was: Eclectic)
by Andrew Williams 29 May '01

29 May '01

Sally wrote: >It is patently obvious what happened, surely - at some time in the near >future, North America, Australia and the rest all decided that an itsy bitsy >mistake had been made along the line ... and voted to rejoin the British >Empire. Funny, the Australia I live in is still part of the British commonwealth, which is what became of the empire after it dissolved.... Andrew.

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re: Corgi Liberators
by JEB31538＠cs.com 29 May '01

29 May '01

I sent some private Emails to Walter who asked about Corgi Liberators since there are some available in a shop in Australia that he knew about. I decided to send this one to the list in case anybody else was wondering what their Corgi Liberators might be worth. ***** The value of any Corgi Liberator is only what someone else will pay for it. I believe up to 250 pounds have been paid for some mint on card Corgi Liberators. Since I personally own nine Corgis, obviously they are not that hard to come by as single ships not on cards and they show up on Ebay frequently. Of the nine I have, only one is mint on card--the multi-pack. It's the MOC ones that are hard to come by. And although I paid high for the MOC one, all the others I got were extremely reasonable, most of them being in the $10 -$20 range. There are various Corgi Liberators and I have the three basic models: white, blue and silver. All have the green ball. But the blue (it's metallic blue) and silver have yellow pieces on them as opposed to the white which is all white. I think the silver ship was only sold in a multi-pack paired with a wonderful NASA Enterprise which opens up. Kevin Davies in DWB made value estimates, the last one dating about 1993. I am not sure if the estimates are for mint on card ones or just the models by themselves. That makes a big difference, I think. It would probably be better to assume he meant MOC than not. He estimated that the white mint would be worth up to ten pounds, silver mint would be worth up to 40 pounds, and blue mint would be worth up to thirty pounds. It's interesting that Corgis are so cheap in Australia. And that some are still available in a shop amazes me, Kevin Davies points out that the ones on sale in the US and Argentina dropped the B7 logo although credit was still given to the BBC and Terry Nation. My silver Corgi with NASA Enterprise MOC came from a lady in the UK two years ago, although, of course, I have no clue where she bought it. It says Made in Great Britain and has no B7 Logo. It does credit BBC and Terry Nation BUT this is hidden under the Enterprise and only BBC and Terry can be read if you hold it at a certain angle. Joyce

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Re: Zine lists coming up
by JEB31538＠cs.com 29 May '01

29 May '01

Tavia did some zine statistics. > > There have been a total of more than 800 all-Blake's 7 fiction zines > produced. Zine production peaked in 1988, with a total of 73 zines, and has > since trailed off appreciably: > > (Numbers are average per year) > 1978--1979: 14 > 1980--1984: 31 > 1985--1989: 55 > 1990--1994: 36 > 1995--1999: 21 > 2000--2001: 9 > No date avail: 54 (total) > Tavia, thank you ever so much. I knew that zine production had failed drastically since I first got into B7 which was in 1993. But it was interesting to see it spelled out. Since there are a total of 800 zines and I own almost every Blake zine (or have owned it at one time) except for two zines, I see now why I have bankers box after box littering my bedroom and driving my husband crazy. Bankers boxers aren't exactly lovely pieces of furniture--especially stacked three and four boxes high. The upside to this is that the cat can use the stacked boxes as a launch pad to get to the top or our seven foot bookcase (also filled with zines and more zines as well as Corgi and Comet Liberators on display) to then jump to the top of the exposed beams in our 15 foot high bedroom and look out at the birds flying about in front of the house and the deer on the hill behind us. So all my boxes of zines DO serve some purpose, even if they do not add to the decor. The two zines I am still looking for, by the way, are Wallow Plus TWO and Orion's Approach. I have no clue that Blake is in them, but I would like to check them out. I will gladly take copies and, yes, I know that Wallow Plus TWO will be virtually unreadable because it is such an old British zine and the production quality has faded with time. Wallow Plus One is an interesting zine, and I really would like to have the sequel. Orion's Approach is a cartoon book. It's rather sad that I join B7 when the average zine amount is 36 and now the average is down to 9. But it is good for the pocketbook (and there's little B7 offered in general these days that I want to buy ) and for the space problem (as in lack of space) in my bedroom. Thanks again, Tavia. Your entire post was extremely interesting. I would think that Judith Proctor might like this information for her website. You might contact her. Joyce

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Re: Shields
by Steve Rogerson 29 May '01

29 May '01

Helen wrote: "I would love to see this discussion as a panel at the Redemption'03" Just added it to the ideas list, which gives me a good excuse to plug the ideas list. If anyone has any ideas for panels or debates, or other events, at Redemption 03, please let me know either on or off list. -- cheers Steve Rogerson http://homepages.poptel.org.uk/steve.rogerson Redemption 03, 21-23 February 2003, Ashford, Kent Celebrating 25 years of Blake's 7 and 10 years of Babylon 5 http://www.smof.com/redemption

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Re: Shields
by Hellen Paskaleva 29 May '01

29 May '01

Steve: <The first point is how do shields work?> Since their main purpose is to stop the enemy's plasma bolts/ blaster fire/ some sort of electromagnetic emission, I would imagine that themselves they are electro-magnetically based (rather than gravity/antigravity based). My reasoning is that one needs strong gravity field in order to distort even slightly a light beam (that's why the effect in astronomy has been observed only around large objects like the sun and Jupiter). And since nobody in the series has ever suggested that there is an artificial black hole (or it's equivalent, whatever it may be) to produce gravity on Liberator, I'd assume, that there isn't one. If the shields are electromagnetic field, that would explain their interaction with the electrically charged plasma bolts. I have to think a bit more about the mere blasters, though, because they are electrically neutral. <Also, different SF programmes vary on whether you can fire your own weapons when the shields are up. Could a shield be only one way in that it will stop incoming fire but allow outgoing fire to pass through?> Some years ago I read about a plastic material, used for clothes for skiing. The paradox was, that it used to allow the water from inside (the sweat) to evaporate, but the water from outside (the snow, mud or whatever) couldn't penetrate through. The principle happened to be related to the size of the water particles - the small vapour drops easily fly out, while the bigger drops of melted snow remained outside the plastic pores. It is possible, that the shields work the same way - they allow the ship's lasers (with a particular frequency) to fire *out*, but stop everything else (with any other frequency) from penetrating *in*. That could be a reason why every time Vila needed to "clear blasters for firing" manually - for security reasons the "home" frequency has to be changed often. <We learn from Harvest that the Liberator has overlapping shields - what's that about? Why couldn't it have just one big shield? Is there an advantage to overlapping shields?> One explanation could be, that if one of the shields is knocked out during a battle, the ship can turn it's protected side to the enemy fire, until the damage is restored. If the ship has a single shield, the ship would be much more vulnerable in such situations. <Also from Harvest, we learn the shields can be detected, otherwise Jarvik couldn't have spotted the gap. How does that work?> If they are electromagnetically based, I would imagine that a humble police radio would be able to do the job. Metaphorically speaking, of course. I have no explanation handy for how shield protected Liberator from impact with the asteroids in Mission To Destiny. <Any thoughts?> I would love to see this discussion as a panel at the Redemption'03. Hellen. Back to lurk mode now. _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

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Penguins ahoy?
by Harriet Monkhouse 29 May '01

29 May '01

Una, are you back here yet? -- Harriet Travis: "That your new muscle, Servalan? Looks like a powder puff." -Gambit

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Re: [B7L] B7 movie
by Steve Kilbane 29 May '01

29 May '01

Susan Beth wrote: > The producers have a genius for taking out what we actually enjoyed about a > show, and 'improving' it with state of the action scenes and sfx. Indeed. Just read comments in this month's SFX about how Pern was canned because of what the network were trying to do to the dialogue (sounded like they wanted Buffy or Xena, from the comments). so I dread to think what they'd do to Boucher's dialogue. steve

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Blakes7 May 2001