--- Mistral mistral@centurytel.net wrote:
I wouldn't know an East End accent if it had me in a chokehold. I can tell they have different accents, but being an American, I don't have any of the social reference points to make it into a class association. I can still see what's being referred to. Travis I is IMO for the most part arrogant, self-contained, and focused, while Travis II is resentful, petulant, and obsessed. I tend to see them as a continuum, with hints of Travis II in Travis I; but someone else might easily read those as the reactions of someone who started within the power structure as opposed to someone who had to fight his way into it.
I guess my own take on this is that Grief plays Travis in SLD almost as a wicked squire (the accent, combined with the way he sneers at everyone). In his early episodes he's much more autonomous and self confident. In season 2 he's the man who is used to do the establishment's dirty work and then discarded - The East End accent is oddly appropriate, especially when he is making his speech in Trial. But you're right, Travis' behaviour is a continuum. His hysteria at the end of SLD, when Blake and Cally teleport out, prefigures his madness in Star One. I think that the key to Travis is that he is a conservative who has discovered the extent of the corruption of the established order - There are passages in Neil's "Wit and Wisdom of the Dead" that read like Alan Massie's Tiberius - whether his initial loyalty to that order comes from being born to it or working his way up the ranks is secondary to this. I prefer the second interpretation, but it is just a personal preference.
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