On Wed, Aug 01, 2001 at 11:56:33AM +0100, James Mansson ARGO wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: "Kathryn Andersen" kat@foobox.net To: "Blake's 7 list" blakes7@lists.lysator.liu.se Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2001 11:10 PM Subject: Re: [B7L] Re: Orbit
On Tue, Jul 31, 2001 at 10:40:41AM -0600, Betty Ragan wrote:
Responding to me, Helen Krummenacker wrote:
And seems to get *far* less than his share of the blame, IMO...
And I think ORAC is always accredited with a fair amount of blame.
Avon seems to get the bulk of it, though. "How could he do such a thing!" and so on. It often seems to me (in fanfics and so forth, anyway) that people tend to overlook the fact that it was all *Orac's* idea...
But it's Avon's fault for listening to it. (Insert Biblical quote which I can't remember which basically refutes the argument "He tempted me" with the answer "You wouldn't have been tempted if you hadn't wanted to do it in the first place")
After all, Orac suggested killing Vila and Tarrant in Headhunter, and Avon refused to do it.
Mind you, there is a difference between that episode (and when Zukan suggests sacrificing crewmembers in Warlord) and Orbit is that in both those cases, there are other crewmembers present, so Avon is partially motivated by the impression he creates on the others. They're prepared to take a lot from him, but not being sacrificed at least until all other possibilities have been exhausted. In Orbit, if Avon had succeded in chucking Vila out of the airlock, he could always have disclaimed responsibility. I suppose you could use Stardrive as a counter-example, in that he uses Vila + Dayna as some sort of "minesweeper", but that counts more as a dangerous rather than suicide mission.
You forgot to mention the death of Dr. Plaxton in the very same episode!
"What about Dr. Plaxton?" "Who?"
Looking good in the others' eyes has never been a factor in Avon's decisions. If anything, the reverse: he he comes up with pragmatic reasons for the altruistic things that he does, thus making himself look worse than he is.
To Avon, survival and pragmatism are his stated guides. Anyone who lets sentiment get in the way of that has his contempt (which is why Blake puzzled him so). So "looking good in front of the others" is irrelevant -- unless you're saying that he's *so* afraid of them that it would be anti-survival for them to think less of him. Which isn't the case, IMHO.
(I'm not sure I'm explaining this well. Oh well.)
Kathryn Andersen -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Cally: Why are we still alive? Blake: We're not sure. There are dozens of ways the ship could destroy us: cut off the air supply, drop the temperature so we freeze to death - Vila: Stop putting ideas into its head. (Blake's 7: Redemption [B1])