The Way Back implies that Blake has been getting forged tapes from his brother and sister, who actually are dead.
Wouldn't the lie, if any, go in the other direction? At that stage, Blake is a convicted and supposedly rehabilitated rebel and traitor. Wouldn't The Powers that Be want him to feel a constant sense of guilt for getting his family killed (whether or not this had actually happened) instead of wanting him to think that his family were still alive off-world? In the latter case, they *could* serve as hostages for his continued good behavior, but in the former, he would be an awe-inspiring example of the high cost of rebellion and therefore an effective deterrent.
-(Y)
Dana wrote...
Wouldn't the lie, if any, go in the other direction? At that stage, Blake is a convicted and supposedly rehabilitated rebel and traitor. Wouldn't The Powers that Be want him to feel a constant sense of guilt for getting his family killed
As I recall after he'd confessed and been tried, they erased his memory of that too. He didn't remember *being* a rebel at the start of the series so there'd be no point the Federation going out of their way to make him feel guilty about it.
Leia
Dana wrote:
Blake is a convicted and supposedly rehabilitated rebel and traitor. Wouldn't The Powers that Be want him to feel a constant sense of guilt for getting his family killed (whether or not this had actually happened) instead of wanting him to think that his family were still alive off-world? In the latter case, they *could* serve as hostages for his continued good behavior, but in the former, he would be an awe-inspiring example of the high cost of rebellion and therefore an effective deterrent.
The Romans made a habit of killing the immediate families of traitors (by throwing them from the Tarpeian Rock) or proscribing them, but whether this deterred people is hard to say. Certainly there were plenty of aspirants to the purple despite this (some successful). Perhaps there would have been a lot more otherwise, who knows.
Nico
At 08:29 12/01/02 -0500, you wrote:
Wouldn't the lie, if any, go in the other direction? At that stage, Blake is a convicted and supposedly rehabilitated rebel and traitor. Wouldn't The Powers that Be want him to feel a constant sense of guilt for getting his family killed (whether or not this had actually happened) instead of wanting him to think that his family were still alive off-world?
It's not entirely clear, but my understanding from TWB was that the Federation forced Blake into confessing and recanting at his trial, and then went on to wipe out all his memories of being a resister, and of the trial, confession and mid-wiping, and then returned him to normal life. As far as he was concerned, he never *was* a rebel. The continued existence of his family is part of that illusion. Bran Foster says explicitly of the tapes:
FOSTER: Those tapes are fakes. Part of the treatment to keep your memory suppressed.
It's certainly clear that Blake has no memory of being a rebel at the beginning of TWB. In TWB, Ravella discusses the existence of resisters and the Federation's use of suppressants to keep control, both of which Blake apparently knows nothing about:
RAVELLA: They've seen what's happening and they want to stop it. BLAKE: Stop what? RAVELLA: Don't you know? Don't you remember anything about the treatments they gave you? BLAKE: I've had no treatments. RAVELLA: I thought there'd be something left, some trace of memory. BLAKE: What about my memory?
When he meets Foster, Blake has no memory of him at all, which you'd expect he would have if he still retained the memories of his rebel days. Foster tells Blake about his involvement with the resisters, his arrest and trial, all of which is news to Blake. He finished with:
FOSTER: ...You said you'd been "misguided." You appealed to everyone to support the Administration, hound up the traitors. Oh, they, they did a good job on you. You were very convincing. And then they took you back and erased even that.
Even when Blake is talking to Varon, his memories haven't, apparently, returned in full:
VARON: If they're as ruthless as you suggest, then why didn't they simply eliminate you? BLAKE: Because I was something of a political figure -- or so you told me.
Now, *why* the Federation totally destroyed Blake's memories of being a rebel is a different question. My guess is that it's related to the mechanisms of memory-erasure.
The memory-blocking procedure seems to be vulnerable to mental conflict, as discussed by Glynd and Havant:
GLYND: Can he break through the memory blocks, Dr. Havant? HAVANT: It's unlikely. We don't eradicate memory, of course, merely make it inaccessible. But in the normal healthy mind the barriers are impenetrable. Should he suffer anything like a nervous breakdown, where all the mental circuitry malfunctions, as it were, then he might just possibly find a route into his past.
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Anna Simpson -
Dana Shilling -
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Nico Mody-Nikoloff