Stephen Date wrote:

--- Jenny Kaye wrote: >

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Honey Bunny "Sally Manton" Wrote:

For someone who claims to be a disinterested seeker of truth in the company of headless chickens you seem to have an inordinate fondness for name calling.

Never claimed to be disinterested. Anyway, what's wrong with "Honey Bunny"? How is it worse than "My Darling"?

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At the risk of flogging what is unquestionably

now a dead horse,

This horse is very much alive and about to bite you on the arse.

Death throes, nothing more.

And look at what happened to the man who said that. And to the man he was saying it about...

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we might

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let the last word go to ...

Terry Nation.

"Gan, the big guy, was the physical presence and

great physical strength,

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...

but the gentle baby of the piece, based a little

on Lenny from 'Of Mice and

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Men''." (Blake's 7: The Inside Story).

Lenny is the mentally retarded giant with enormous strength, who is continually killing pets and small animals by accident, unable to understand what he is doing. He crushes a man's hand in a rage, and, in the climax of the book, when a woman gets into a sexual clinch with him, he strangles her and hides the body in a desperate panic-- knowing that he has done wrong but being unable to stop himself.

A somewhat inaccurate and sensationalist retelling. Lenny crushes the man's hand because he has the mind of a child in the body of a giant.

According to the chapter synopsis at: http://www.isk-tv.no/~gmdata/teachers/english/novels/micemen/micemen.htm

"Curley beats on Lennie until George tells Lennie to "get him." Lennie crushes Curley's hand. Slim orders Curley to say it was a machine accident"

In other words, Lenny was provoked. Interesting too that he is acting on orders from somebody else. Much like Gan can kill when he has the permission of the group he's with.

He kills the woman by accident for the same reason. They are not in a sexual clinch.

To quote the same site, a resource site for English students:

"Lennie begins to get excited as he pets her hair. This may be due to the fact that she is very pretty, and though Lennie may not understand it, he is attracted to her. In addition, he always tends to get excited when petting things, such as with the mice, the dog, and the red dress in Weed. She complains he is petting to hard, but he doesn’t stop right away. She gets angry, and Lennie gets scared, holding onto to her because that is always his reaction when he is scared (the red dress, Curley’s fist). She gets scared too, fearing he will rape her or kill her, though Lennie has no intention of doing either. Lennie accidentally breaks her neck, killing her, as he tries to stop her from screaming."

If you think he crushed a man's hand for the same reason as he killed his wife-- then there's a sadomasochistic gay subtext to the novel that I doubt Steinbeck would have recognised.

The story is a tragedy of plans which go awry "The best laid plans of mice and men go aft agley" (I'm quoting from memory).

So is Gan's.

Not a psychological thriller with Lenny as a rural version of the Boston strangler.

No, it wasn't. But it was a story about a strong and mentally disturbed man who could not stop himself from killing.

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If this is who Nation has based Gan on... I think you need to rethink your fanon. And I need to rethink my earlier statement that Nation never suggested that Gan was a murdering psychopath. He has, but he's playing the double game still.

Two points - firstly Nation described Gan as being "based a little on Lenny". Not as being just like Lenny.

No. As you point out, Lenny was not a psychopath. But the point is, Lenny killed animals and people, and couldn't stop himself. So, for other reasons, did Gan (though we don't know aobut him killing any animals). In that, Gan is a little like Lenny.

The quality Nation points to are Lenny's

strength and gentleness, qualities Gan shares.

No. First he says:

was the physical presence and

...

great physical strength,

...

...

but the gentle baby of the piece,

*then* he says:

based a little

...

on Lenny from 'Of Mice and

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...

Men''

He doesn't say "Lenny is gentle and strong, so is Gan"; he says "Gan is strong and gentle," then he says "he's based a little on Lenny." No connection there.

If Lenny and Gan bore a greater resemblance however, this would not make Gan a psychopathic killer.

No, in fact the opposite. And isn't the comparison interesting? He doesn't compare him with the retarded giant in "The Sound and the Fury" does he? Or with Little John? Or any other kindly and slow characters in fiction? No, he compares him to the one with a manslaughter record. And the one who in the end is shot by his friend and guardian.

Lenny is a sympathetic character, a victim of fate.

Gan is sympathetic too. That's the point.

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Either Nation and Boucher are just playing a game with us, or it was all leading up to something. If it was leading up to something, what was it? and why didn't it happen?

The one discussion on the subject I recall reading - I think it was the book Sally cites (I'm sorry, lightweight that I am I was reading it in Forbidden Planet !) - suggests that the production team decided to kill one crew member off in season 2 and decided that Gan was the best choice as there wasn't a lot else they could do with his character. This would seem to indicate that the production team saw Gan as being a gentle giant. If there had been a Boston Strangler sub-plot to be unfolded then obviously they could have done rather more with him.

But they couldn't very well do a Boston Strangler story (although I think the comparison you're looking for is Pennies From Heaven, actually) in a 1978 hard-sci-fi show going out before the watershed, could they? No wonder Gan wound up a fifth wheel.

Jenny

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