Iain W wrote: <Blake issues the orders to the crew after they have teleported down. This is bad planning and terrible management. They should have had all this sorted out before they teleport. If they planned these things properly maybe they wouldn't go wrong!>

<g> Now this is rather unfair IMO. Wars (being the messy things they are) don't usually *have* proper management plans because - not surprisingly - proper and throrough assessment is a little hard to do beforehand ("excuse me, we're planning to blow your place up next week, could we have a look round and do some tests to work out what level of explosives we'll need?")

Blake quite possibly *couldn't* have worked out and given the orders before they went down - since none of them had been on a base like this before, how would they know what to expect? And he only has *five people* (including himself) to do this, so of course he'd be planning to adapt to the circumstances they found down there (one of the reasons Travis could never beat Blake *was* that Travis did all this planning that you're keen on; Blake thought on the fly and therefore always threw a monkey-wrench into the plans (see also Duel).

Obviously the amount of explosive needed to destroy this place was exceptional for some reason, since Gan thought half the amount Blake ordered was sufficient, didn't he? They *did* think about the size of the charges, but was obviously wrong (as happens all too often *in* wars, where you can't take time out to do an on-site assessment or go back and work it all out again).

Remember, except for Cally, they're all still amateurs at this business - learning very quickly to work together and building up fairly impressive teamwork when it's needed (the scenes with Servalan and the Deadly Duo make it clear that this is not the first bit of Fighting for Freedom, there's been enough to make Blake an increasingly popular hero) - but still raw enough to make mistakes. And in this business, learning on the job probably gets most people *killed*.

Forgetting Cally was a doozy of a mistake, I agree (I think that Blake, on teleporting, charges straight off to the flightdeck, not surprising since there's no one *there*, and assumed Cally was with the others ... and they assumed she'd gone with him. But still, it *was* a blunder).

JMO ...

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