From: Tavia tavia@btinternet.com

Re Fiona's interesting post.

Thank you :).

One could postulate other reasons for the set-up in 'Aftermath'.

The episode is obviously intended to introduce Dayna. Reading 'The Inside Story' it's apparent that Josette Simon was hired primarily for her skin colour, youth, looks, and lack of ethnic or American accent.

Although Anthony Brown, the editor of InVision, had a chance recently to see the contemporary list of people up for the part, and tells me that they weren't specifically looking for an ethnic actress when they were casting (he's also, btw, the man who got me the interesting bit of trivia about Maurice "Gangsters" Colbourne having been up for the part of Blake). IIRC the character had been created and the episode written before they were sure Josette Simon was hired, too--though they might have changed the name of the character at some point, I'm not sure.

there mentions only David Moloney and Vere Lorimer in this context, but it's hard to see that they would have made casting decisions impacting so obviously on character without overt back-up from Terry Nation, who owned the concept and continued to write three key 3rd season episodes. On a 'give the gal a USP' principle, this blank young slate acquires the weapons tech background. From there on in, one can see the episode 'Aftermath' developing ... sexually naive young gal (the kiss in the cave), weapons tech background (all the Hal Mellanby stuff to which Fiona refers), oh dear we've lost Jenna, so we need a blonde bimbette replacement (Lauren).

Following you on all of these, but I feel a bit lost on the last statement. AFAIK, Lauren was never intended to become a regular-- do you mean she was brought in to let the viewers think that she was going to join the crew? Or because the episode needed some blonde content :)?

Hack writing at its worst (best?).

But the fact that he was writing to a formula doesn't necessarily make the episode bad, or non-complex. Dickens was the perennial hack writer, after all, writing to a blatant formula; so was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; Hemingway and Jules Verne had their hack episodes. All of these have produced works in this context which are no less than brilliant.

I think what you say is right-- that Nation was given a particular set of things he had to do in Aftermath (introduce Dayna and give her some characterisation, tie up the loose ends of "Star One," introduce Tarrant at the very end). But I don't particularly see why he can't, within those confines, come up with something very good. Chris Boucher faced similar constraints on "Star One," after all.

I'm not saying this is what happened, but I think it's a plausible alternative scenario.

And I say it needn't necessarily be alternative, but I don't think the fact that it was being written as a character-introductory vehicle necessarily makes it a bad story, and indeed, it's stood up to analysis very well, I think.

Considering the 9 Chris Boucher episodes *as a whole*, a high proportion of them have the plot complexity, the political machinations &c that Fiona characterises as his style, though there are exceptions (Rescue, City).

Yes-- though I think Rescue's brilliant too, myself (saw it over Christmas, fantastic). I haven't seen City in about a year, though, so I can't comment.

Considering the 19 Terry Nation episodes *as a whole*, a high proportion of them appear to be basically hack adventure writing with any complexities sufficiently well hidden as to escape this viewer entirely.

Erm, well... remember how when we looked at Deliverance (which I for one had always thought was a fairly facile episode, up until Feb.), we found a whole bunch of interesting things that we hadn't realised were there? We couldn't have spun the discussion out for four weeks without there being something to discuss. And how just now, a seeming characterisation gap in TWB/Space Fall turned out not to be one? And the same with Aftermath-- whether or not you agree with me that there's something dodgy about Hal, several people on this thread have been talking in terms of references to Shakespeare, to the ambiguity about Lauren, etc. My point is, Nation wrote stories which look simple, because he was of the opinion that simple sells (and he was right, perhaps unfortunately). But at least three of his stories do seem to provide material to talk about, and maybe the same can be said of at least some of the others too...

And like I said, just cos something's hack writing doesn't mean it isn't complex :). Terry Nation: hack, yes. Stupid or sloppy, no.

Fiona

The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Hack writing at its finest at http://nyder.r67.net

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