Fiona wrote:
Dunno about that-- have you read Jim Smith's episode reviews in Zenith and in Horizon 39, on "Trial" and "Gambit"? Quite a bit of the series seems to be about politics of a very Byzantine level of complexity and intrigue.
Much to my surprise, I find myself agreeing here. While the overwhelming feeling I carried away from the series was action--adventure with a bit of black leather and sf cliche's thrown in, there are a fairly large number of episodes with at least some political content (eg, and I'm sure I've missed some, TWB, Breakdown, Bounty, Shadow, Horizon, Trial, VftP, Gambit, StarOne, RoD, Death-Watch, Traitor, Animals, Warlord).
We don't even know what sort of governmental system the fictional country
of
Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" had, but that doesn't make it any less a
political
story.
Brilliant film. As I recall, though, 'Brazil' charted the effect of the regime on individual citizens, which made the precise nature of the governmental system less important than in something like B7 where the Merry Band is opposing the System.
I think some of the information deficiencies that Dana pointed out were pure bad writing, probably because of the joint authorship of the series, where some writers were plainly more interested in the political dimension than others.
Well, I've read (and enjoyed) some of your stories, and I agree from those that it is quite possible to do slash with interesting premises and messages. But I think it's the awful ones that people object to more than the interesting ones. If I want to read sex for sex's sake, frankly, I'll buy a porn mag.
We'll convert you yet... I fear, however, that you might be in a minority here. I get the impression that some readers find well-written and interesting slash stories even more pernicious than badly written dull ones. (I've heard a lot more invective directed at Nickey Barnard's 'Haunted' than any other single story.)
Tavia