Blakes7

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5511 discussions

Lyst member infected by virus
by Julia Jones 25 Nov '01

25 Nov '01

At least one Lyst member has been hit by the w32.badtrans.b@mm virus. See http://www.symantic.com for details, but the virus mails a copy of itself to addresses it finds in the victim's address book, using a header from an existing email to make it appear that the infected email is a reply to something you sent the victim. It also installs a Trojan that allows your keystrokes to be logged. I've had several copies of the virus over the last 12 hours, from more than one City member, and to both my FC and Lyst email addresses. <http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.badtrans.b@m m.html> -- Julia Jones "Science is not about building a body of known 'facts'. It is a method for asking awkward questions and subjecting them to a reality-check, thus avoiding the human tendency to believe whatever makes us feel good." - The Science of Discworld

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RE: Re: [B7L] Re: Betrayal and episode 'Blake'
by jacquispeel＠netscape.net 25 Nov '01

25 Nov '01

Harriet Monkhouse <hflysator(a)jarriere.demon.co.uk> wrote: >Kai wrote: >>Again we can say that what we are hearing is actually a translation in >>itself, and the language that the characters really speak is not English >>at all or is an eight hundred years older variant of English that bears as >>little resemblance to Modern English as Modern English does to the >>language of Beowulf. > >I think I'm most comfortable with that idea. >-- >Harriet > Language can/does date very easily - even in the era of recorded sound (to what extent have sound recordings stabilised (any) language? Was the invention of sound recordings more significant than that of cinema film?) Going back to my original point - to what extent is whether Avon uses familiar/formal 'you' (even implicitly) to Blake significant? Jacqui -- __________________________________________________________________ Your favorite stores, helpful shopping tools and great gift ideas. Experience the convenience of buying online with Shop@Netscape! http://shopnow.netscape.com/ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape Mail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com/

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Re: [B7L] to Neil - virus
by Sally Manton 25 Nov '01

25 Nov '01

Sorry to do this ... Neil, you appear to have the virus Julia mentioned, I got an email from you with all the symptoms this morning ... Sally _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp

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RE: Re: [B7L] Crossovers
by Nicola Mody-Nikoloff 25 Nov '01

25 Nov '01

Sally Manton wrote: > Nicola: > <Up till season 4 anyway, poor thing. Vila has the stuffing > knocked out of him > then. I can only recall 3 or 4 scenes where the poor guy can > even crack a smile.> > > And I can't see it getting much better for him in *any* > Season 5. Not with > this lot. (Actually, I know I'm one of those minorities of > approximately one > here, but I'm still firmly of the opinion that, if Blake > survived and had > anything - people/a base/a ship - to still call his own, Vila > would tell > fannish sentiment and the Scorpio crew to go to hell and want > to stay with > Fearless and now Extremely Fearsome Leader. *None* of them > have really any > call on his loyalties by that stage, and especially not My Darling. You're in a minority of two then. I've always thought Blake treated Vila very well - sure he got annoyed with him occasionally, but he never put him down; he even complimented him several times! They worked very well together when they were on missions. I think they had a lot of respect for each other. Vila did say he stayed because he liked Blake (and had nowhere else to go). And remember the smile (one of the very few in season 4) on Vila's face in 'Blake' when he says "You've found Blake!" Then the poor bastard sees Avon gun him down. I still hold to my opinion that Vila is a very tragic character despite his humour. And I've never subscribed to the belief that Vila and Avon were close, or that Vila would easily forgive Avon. They may have once enjoyed each others' wit and prowess at chess, but I would never have called them friends. Nico *** This e-mail is privileged and confidential. If you are not the intended recipient please delete the message and notify the sender. ***

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Re: Betrayal and episode 'Blake'
by Kai V Karmanheimo 25 Nov '01

25 Nov '01

Sally wrote: <<Kai wrote, among other good stuff: <<<with Vila one always gets the feeling he should sound more colloquial than <<he does.> << <<This is a problem with Vila in English as well :-) I've read a number of <<stories where he's written with a heavy and intrusive 'dialect', supposedly <<to emphasise his lower class, and always find it distracting.>> The dialect thing is one question I think I did ignore completely. Finnish does have a rich variety of distinct regional dialects, which can be written out fairly easily, but they are not socially coded in a way that many British English dialects still seem to be. Travis 2's accent played no role in my translation of "Star One". With Vila it seems to be more an attitude, rather than anything specifically tied to either vocabulary or pronunciation, that screams "informal" in my ear. I agree that a thick dialect would be just pandering to a contemporary stereotype. I wouldn't mind a more liberal use of dialects in the series, as long as they didn't go to feed the existing prejudices (where are those illiterate, ignorant beggars who speak perfect RP?) <<<It may also be the dialogue's tendency towards the kind of neutral sci-fi <<dialect, where temporal tell-tale signs like contemporary slang or <<pronounced regional accents are downplayed to homogenise the language and <<also to make it sound more "timeless".> << <<I also think any attempt to invent 'new' slang or word usages tend tto jar <<horribly (in Stardrive, for instance).>> I don't find the stabs at slang in "Stardrive" or elsewhere problematic, but I do find the question of slang use in speculative fiction in general very much so. Of course, language, just like technological or social details, changes over time and what seems absolutely utopian now, may well sound antiquated or worse, unintelligible half a century later (how about Avon telling Vila to "hide the oodle" in "Gambit" or Servalan telling Travis to "ice Blake and his havage"). Still the linguistic conservatism of the space opera genre particularly annoys me sometimes. Apart from the requisite technical gobbledygook (something that Blake's 7 mostly handles with dignity; no "abfurcating the endoligroinial coils in the taurofecal wanga-wangas" here), there is little linguistic invention, as if to confirm that despite the tinfoil clothes and Fairy bottle rockets we're still playing the old game of cowboys and Indians and this is the way that all people talk everywhere, now and in the future. Even antiquated jargon might sound better, simply because of its defamiliarising effect. Again we can say that what we are hearing is actually a translation in itself, and the language that the characters really speak is not English at all or is an eight hundred years older variant of English that bears as little resemblance to Modern English as Modern English does to the language of Beowulf. Yet you'd think that people who have grown up in completely different circumstances on planets with no mutual contact in centuries would not sound like they went to the same public school or referred to things that neither of their cultures probably has had in ages. Things can stay in the language long after the original concepts have disappeared or lost validity, but though lot of Western languages retain metaphors or expressions coined by nomadic tribes a couple of thousand years ago, it's a bit too conceited to expect all our petty little things that are currently in fashion to be around pestering the people after a couple of thousand more years (even if you are just using the future as an allegory for passions present or past). So yes, as easy as it is to get it wrong, I would like to see more linguistic innovation is science fiction, new slang, new colloquialisms, new expressions. I like Vila's "bubble in a black hole", Cally's "may you die alone and silent" (which I read as the most vulgar curse ever said in the series) or Bayban's "son of a slimecrawler". Far from original perhaps, but at least something that you could imagine has risen out of the characters' respective circumstances. Something that in its own little way enhances the illusion that these people actually are born out of, belong to and have to function within this make-believe world, instead of the impression that they have just walked in from a very late-20th century pub or detox clinic. Kai

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Re: Andromeda
by Steve Rogerson 25 Nov '01

25 Nov '01

Una McCormack wrote: > > Given our current 'Andromeda' chat, various people will be interested to > learn that Robert Hewitt Wolfe has been fired from the show, for putting in > too much story and not enough action. That is so depressing, just as season two was getting really good. They must think all TV viewers are idiots or something. But it doesn't all follow, I'm part way through watching season three of Charmed and it has run an arc for quite a few episodes on the Beltazoid/Cole thing. -- 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: Betrayal and episode 'Blake'
by Ellynne G. 25 Nov '01

25 Nov '01

On Sun, 25 Nov 2001 08:38:14 +1100 Kathryn Andersen <kat_lists(a)katspace.com> writes: > > The difficulty with this, and indeed with trying to create any > futuristic language use (such as Kai was complaining of the lack of > in > B7) is that most native English-speakers are completely unaware of > (a) > the non-translatability of puns and (b) the high level of idioms we > use > in our everyday speech. Idioms don't translate either. If you'll pardon the idiom, been there, done that, bought the T-shirt. It's not just idioms. I've spent my time going nuts trying to explain things that were littered with cultural expectations (try explaining the phrase "Oh, grow up," to someone whose culture doesn't necessarily combine independence [in some of the senses we use it] with maturity). And let's not even talk about accidentally using what seems like a simple, connect the dots metaphore that, it turns out, _isn't_ even where background (but not language) are fairly similar. Or explaining _connotations_ (think about it, they may mean the same thing, but would you give a pirate a ship called "The Revenge" or the "Tit-For-Tat"? Although I have seen some writers who were clever with it. I remember a short story where the evil colonial power types kept getting eaten by a local monster because they refused to learn the local language and the saftey precautions didn't translate clearly. > Actually, in B7, the thing that bugged me about the language use was > not > the slang that the Space Rats used -- I thought that was rather good > -- > but the jokes that Vila told in "Ultraworld". > Where to space-pilots park their ships? > By parking meteors. > > That jarred, because "parking meters" is such a late-20th-century > concept that I find it hard to believe that a culture such as > 28th-century Federated Earth is going to *have* such things as > parking > meters; we don't even know if private individuals are allowed to own > their own vehicles, necessarily, and if they didn't then the concept > of > parking meters would be nonsensical. Of if everyone used air-cars, > then > maybe the concept of "parking" isn't the same. Do you see what I > mean? Even authors I love - like Bujold - do this. Russian's supposed to be the main language, with some French, Greek, and English - but no one seems to speak it. For example, the ruling counts, we're told, got their titles from a degeneration of 'accountants.' > Of course, one thing that I don't think anyone writing SF is very > likely > to do is write a story in which the *meanings* of well-known words > have > changed (or at least, the most common, salient meaning has changed). > Even though we've observed such a phenomenon in our own lifetimes > with > the word "gay". Their readers would be too confused if, say, > calling > someone "blue" was a deadly insult, or if "typewriter" meant "an > obsolete holo-projector" etc. Easier on the brain to use new words. Unless they do it well or with a point. It's very important that Herbert's Fremen use 'water' and 'moisture' in place of 'blood.' Vinge, if I remember right, used 'blue' effectively as slang for police (and sometimes as a deadly insult among those who didn't like them). But I should talk. Languages fascinate me, but I have a very limited talent with them (9 out of 10 I'd have given the Andromeda ep the wrong spelling). Oh, I try. I did come up with a basic theory of Trek vs B7 English, but it's mostly accounting for sound and word differences (which isn't terribly consistent of me). No, what I'm proud of is coming up with a long, drawn out theory on why Betazoid feminine names end with a. > Ellynne ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/web/.

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Re: [B7L] Re: familiar or formal
by Ellynne G. 24 Nov '01

24 Nov '01

On Fri, 23 Nov 2001 10:27:05 -0500 "Dana Shilling" <dshilling(a)worldnet.att.net> writes: > Helen said: > > > I think Avon's default would be the formal. No idea which he'd use > for > > the situation in "Blake" as he believed the betrayal to be from > someone > > very close indeed. > > It all depends on whether the Bible has survived as a religious or > even > a literary text, cf. "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me." > In fact, religious texts are the only ones in which "thou" continues > to be > used in C21 English. And Shakespeare, I suppose (I can really imagine Avon and Vila having an Antipholus-Dromio conversation [and am now imagining a story in which Avon and Vila arrive on a planet where, unbeknownst to them, their long lost twin brothers (with the same names and wearing identical outfits [I can see it in Avon's case (black leather is black leather [am I asking for trouble, saying that?) but it's a bit more of a stretch in Vila's]) live and where Blake (also unbeknownst to them) has been taken prisoner and will be executed at the end of the day. Jenna, who also (unbeknownst, etc) is living there, having taken up the religious life after mistakenly concluding Blake was dead, further complicates things]). I don't have any idea which way Avon would go with Shakespearean English. I suppose he'd use 'thou' with Vila, being his social superior, and with Anna. Outside of that, I'm not sure of the times when it would have been right to use and when it wouldn't. But I think he'd use 'you' with Blake, being formal and distant, right up until 'Blake.' Dana's right. The Biblical overtone makes it that much stronger (brilliant idea, actually, IMHO). Ellynne ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/web/.

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Re: [B7L] Crossovers
by Steve Kilbane 24 Nov '01

24 Nov '01

Harriet: > The result is that in mid third season, which is where I'm at, > they've had to split the crew between two ships who get alternate > episodes. ...which happened to confuse the heck out of me, since I happened to miss that particular episode; I just got the impression that the Beeb had dropped the stack of tapes, and not bothered to sort after picking them up. Having read an "upcoming episodes" guide in an old magazine to work out what I'd missed, things became *much* clearer. steve

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Re: Site update
by Sally Manton 24 Nov '01

24 Nov '01

Thanks Minnie, they were lovely :-) And while I think of it (having recently had to re-*down*load affter *up*grading) there's 4 Blakes 7 music videos for the downloading at http://www.morgaine1.btinternet.co.uk/Videos.htm#_Blakes_Seven and very nice they are two (I love the Brothers in Arms one). Sally _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp

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