--- Neil Faulkner N.Faulkner@tesco.net wrote: >
might not have started shooting even if Avon had held back. Probably not, though, since he would seem to have become the de facto leader of his party, a position for which he was not entirely qualified and did not particularly want.
Agreed on point one (that he wasn't entirely qualified). As to point two, though... I forget who it was, but someone pointed out a while back that Avon was actually very keen on taking over the Liberator, and stated his intention of doing so on several occasions (e.g. Pressure Point, Killer, Star One etc), not to mention on hanging onto his leadership position once he had gotten it (Season 3).
Avon's style of leadership would seem to be fairly dictatorial and he'd picked up a few of Blake's less pleasant traits (e.g. not telling his crew what's going on but presenting the scenario as a fait accompli). Where the two leadership styles differed was in that where Blake's crew worked as a team, Avon's crew did so less and less, winding up with a situation with Avon giving the orders and the rest acting upon them. This is seen most clearly in the last episode, where after Avon kills Blake, he appears to resign leadership and the crew become reactive rather than proactive; Tarrant, who could possibly have taken over the leadership role, calls passively to Avon for help before being shot down.
There is, of course, the possibility that he shot the clone, and that the real Blake is still out there.
This explanation has always sat ill with me, firstly because Orac's seldom wrong, and secondly because the clone, while a physical copy, did not contain Blake's life experiences, and so (leaving aside the fact that this would make nonsense of the final scene; how could a man who'd never known Avon react as Blake did to seeing/being shot by him? Recall that in an earlier version of the script Blake's last line to Avon was "You were my only friend..."), the idea that it would wind up on Gauda Prime trying to start a revolution doesn't necessarily read. Also, Blake's behaviour in "Blake" doesn't really fit too well with the Clonemasters' reverence for life, which they apparently instilled in the clone.
The possibility of the clone meeting Avon PGP could be interesting though, given that the clone would not know him (there's a James Schmitz story from the fifties which briefly goes into the situation of a clone created to be the exact duplicate of someone... but who, once she is no longer needed in this way, goes off and has a life of her own which is quite different from her original's).
Fiona
The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Available for public perusal at http://nyder.r67.net
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