From: "Marian de Haan" maya@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
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