----- Original Message ----- From: Jenny Kaye jennycat55@hotmail.com

Fiona wrote:

...

Is Gan really a psychopath on the quiet? And if he isn't, how does one explain "Time Squad" and "Breakdown"?

Funny you mention those, because I saw "Breakdown" recently and so I

thought

I'd watch "Time Squad" last night. I'd say there is something very nasty going on with Gan,

Yes, I agree.

Why don't we ever hear what Cally says to Kayne (sp?) about why Gan has

the

limiter?

Interesing, isn't it? It could, actually, be that it is because he's a psychopath, and the story about the guard is either a lie or not the whole story. Elsewhere in the episode, you get the exchange:

KAYN: Farron is a bureaucratic fool. I'm talking about stability, Renor, stability. With no stability there is no progress. RENOR: Progress to what? Brain implantation? KAYN: A dangerous psychopath? Certainly. Or would you prefer he'd been executed? RENOR: That's what you intend to do, isn't it? You're going to delay the operation so that Blake and his crew can be captured.

The implication is that Kayn assumes Gan to be a psychopath because of the limiter; since Kayn is a brain surgeon, one would assume he'd know. At the end of the episode, also, we learn that Gan still has his limiter-- surely the crew would have asked for it to be removed if they thought he was better off without it.

Why does Gan make excuses for the bad guys in "Time Squad"?

Under that scenario, either he is trying to lull Jenna into a false sense of security, or else he is projecting his own behaviour onto the Guardians and making excuses for it.

Why can Gan knock people down like ninepins in other episodes but can't stop the

men

attacking Jenna?

Again, that's an interesting one to me. The limiter doesn't seem to stop him hurting people-- and in fact, he appears to kill someone in Cygnus Alpha. By contrast, he doesn't appear to have even had a go at the Guardians-- he says "couldn't stop them," but then, interestingly, he says "never wanted to." Furthermore, given that the Guardians outnumbered him and that they have no scruples in killing (and they don't show signs of a struggle at all), if he attacked them, why is he still alive? Perhaps he didn't attack them, and it was something else setting his limiter off.

In "Breakdown," Gan attacks Jenna, and is restrained; he attacks Blake too, but that's after Blake tries to pull him off. Later on, he tricks Cally into releasing him, and attacks her. In "Duel," only Gan sees Giroc and Sinofar, and they only appear to people who are intending to kill (*having* killed would not seem to be a qualification, since the others don't, and Blake and Travis see them only when they engage in a fight to the death); when he does, he says "I hope my limiter hasn't malfunctioned." In "Project Avalon," we see Gan washing down a pill with water, after Avalon's appeared on the ship, and fairly shortly before he attacks her. In "Time Squad," his limiter begins to kick in, not when the Guardians are released, but when he's left alone on the ship with Jenna. Interesting... could it be that the limiter isn't intended to prevent him from attacking people per se, but attacking women?

It's also interesting that he says, in "Time Squad," that he needs to be with people. In Project Avalon, he only attacks when Jenna says "Gan, that's not Avalon"; in "Deliverance" and "Cygnus Alpha," he is also told to attack. In "Redemption" he does not get a direct order, but still he is with a group who are attacking the guards. By contrast, the times when he develops a headache or attacks people without being ordered are when he is alone with someone. Blake, in "Breakdown," says "the limiter is supposed to cut in when stress drives him to the point where he might kill"-- he doesn't say what the stress is, or whether the limiter has other functions, or anything about it other than that. Could the limiter *not* actually be intended to stop him from killing people per se, but to prevent him from attacking people (and specifically women) independently?

Any thoughts?

"Time Squad" could, interestingly, be like the Mellanby discontinuities in "Aftermath" writ large. Gan acts very much out of character in it-- but this is a bit of an odd thing, as not only would Terry Nation presumably have a reasonable grip on his own characters (and he seems fine with the others), but it's early enough on in the series that one wouldn't expect the bits of backstory-contradiction etc. that one finds later. So why *does* Gan act out of character? And why invent the limiter? It can't be a one-or-two-eps-only plot device-- there's easier ways of putting even Gan out of action (or you could have had Vila on the Liberator in "Time Squad" and Gan on the planet). Like Hal Mellanby, there could be a decidedly evil side of Gan that isn't apparent on the surface.

Interestingly, in "Survivors," Terry Nation includes a regular character who rapes and murders a woman... and who gets away with it, due to somebody else being blamed. One thing Nation does do a lot is reuse ideas. Perhaps he's doing the same here? Anyway, this is why I think "Mark of Kane" is right, and Gan could quite well be the Cat Strangler after all.

Oh, and "Time Squad" was also directed by Pennant Roberts. Which explains a lot about the lighting and lack of tension and pace.

Fiona

The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Totally out of character at http://nyder.r67.net

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