From: Kathryn Andersen kat@welkin.apana.org.au
But are internal explanations really severable from authorial intent.
It
was, after all, Nation's intention that Blake should know something Gan didn't, even if it was just an excuse for a bit of info-dumping. And it
was
also Nation's intent to give us that information, otherwise the exchange between Blake and Gan would never have been written in. Since Nation
saw
fit to include it, presumably there is some kind of message there, from which some meaning can be extracted.
Yes you *can* do that -- but not if you are playing the game of "find the *internal* explanation" -- as we do so often. The exploring of the history of the B7 universe in its own terms... For the internal explanation, one considers things like Blake's penchant for knowing historical trivia, and so on.
(kathryn bangs head against desk) Guess I failed to comminicate again.
No, I got your meaning, I just don't agree with it. The internal explanation still doesn't escape the author. Blake's historical interests don't come from nowhere - Nation put them in.
I've nothing against 'playing the game', ghod knows I've done it myself enough times, but I don't think we should ever lose sight of the fact that it is just a game, and everything we see in every episode was put there by somebody, though not necessarily on purpose.
I think the only time an internal explanation can escape authorial intent ('author' here including such people as set and costume design, prop/model makers etc) is when a connection between two or more elements within the series arises through what might be called coincidence, though in a rather loose sense of the word. That is, an internal connection that was not planned to be one as such. Take, for example, the similarity between the London, the salvage vessel from Fosforon, and the T-16 transporter in Moloch. They all look distinctly similar, and for a pretty obvious reason - it's the same model being reused. But the chances are that it is the same model in order to save time and money designing a new ship each time from scratch, rather than to build up a sense of continuity. It is (probably) not authorial intent that all three ships look alike, though it might be, since other episodes do feature original ships where the London model might have been used yet again.
Authorial intent is even less likely in the case of, say, Space City briefly appearing in the Andromedan War footage at the beginning of Aftermath. The implication certainly seems to be that it is supposed to be an alien vessel, probably reused on the premise (not unreasonable in pre-VCR days) that no one would notice. We can, however, rationalise its appearance by positing that what we are seeing is in fact Space City defending itself from alien attack, and it is yet possible that the model was used on that very premise. (More likely, we won't attempt to rationalise it at all, and just gloss over another tacky SFX shot.)
I can't offhand think of any surefire coincidence vis a vis characters, though there might well be some. Recognising them could well be a problem. Blake's disfigured eye in the last episode is a good example - it well be coincidental, but there have been at least two plausible reasons for it being conscious authorial intent (as a symbol of 'blurred vision', or as a deliberate echo of Travis).
In fact 'playing the game' would seem to be called into play more often to explain away anomalies and disparities, which abound in B7, yet these too tend to arise through authorial intent (often coupled with authorial carelessness, sometimes by the same author in different episodes).
'Internal explanation' is a barrier erected by the viewer to shield her/imself from awareness of the author (a process that more commonly goes by the name of 'suspension of disbelief'). A good author works to facilitate the erection of that barrier, otherwise s/he might as well just get up on a soapbox and rant (and authors who do just that tend to be considered bad authors). There are exceptions, of course, as in comedies of the Naked Gun/Airplane mould that work by tearing that barrier down at every opportunity. But most serious dramas, like B7, strive to create an internal consistency that either puts the wall up for the benefit of the viewer or at least offers sufficient raw material for it to be constructed.
Even at its best, it's a translucent wall. It's down to the individual viewer to decide just how far s/he is going to restrict his/er vision - to stop at the internal explanation, or to see beyond it to the shadowy author lurking behind it.
In practice, of course, it's not exactly difficult to do both at the same time.
Neil