Fringe: season 1
Tansy and Alisa have been raving about Fringe for I don’t know how long. I tried the first episode ages ago and wasn’t that grabbed by it, but listening to those two – and hearing them agree that it was great – piqued my interest. So I bought the boxed set.
This is not a review, just some rambling thoughts and questions about the series. It does contain spoilers. And if you comment with spoilers about the next four seasons, I will track you down and cry at you.
Characters: eeeee I love Olivia. I remember I think Alisa saying that she’s the gun-drawing violent one in comparison to Peter’s more cautious character, and there really are some nice stereotyped gender-swapped moments. But Olivia overall is awesome. I love that they give her such a good relationship with her sister and niece without it compromising her job (even though it puts the niece in danger once, which was unpleasant). I do think she accepts the weird stuff a bit faster than I would have expected… but perhaps that can be explained by her both experiencing the weird stuff first hand, and her being driven enough to use any means necessary to catch the villains. And she sometimes ties back her hair before going off to chase villains!
I love Peter. I am not coming from a Dawson’s Creek background, so there is no residual Pacey affection clouding my thoughts. But Peter – he’s marvellously complicated. I love the exploration of his relationship with Walter, I love his shady past and the way he’s really quite open about it and uses it for good. It’s a bit problematic to see just how quickly he appears to have turned to the Bright Side, but I think that can be explained by the Bright Side finally giving him enough of a challenge that he doesn’t need to evil to be amused anymore. There’s clearly a lot more to be found out about Peter’s background – I don’t think they’ve adequately resolved the whole ‘people are after him’ thing, so I expect that to keep recurring, which is so fine.
Walter is… well. Brilliantly acted. John Noble portrays driven, and confused, and childlike, and distressed magnificently. Snapping between his different mental states is done to great effect, and I love that his attitude isn’t always in keeping with everyone else’s; he’s so clearly on a completely different plane from those around him. While Olivia and Peter are great, and drive the plot forward, I don’t think the show would work without Walter. And I don’t mean because he’s the brains and clearly partly (if not mostly) the reason for the weirdness going on – I mean because his offbeat character is what makes this more than just an X Files remake.
And then there’s my one frustration: Astrid. We know a little about even Broyles’ home life, by the end of the season, but Astrid? Nada. We know she’s got a linguistics and computer science background, but only because it was relevant to the plot at one stage. If I don’t get some more background on her in the next season, I am going to be very cranky indeed. My darling is convinced she’s going to end up being evil…
The plot: I like the alternate reality thing. I still don’t really see how or why the nasty events to this point contribute to anything to do with the alternate reality – because I assume that’s what will be revealed – but I’m willing to go along with it. There were a few episodes that threatened to slide into just-another-monster-of-the-week, but mostly the writers rescued them with some line about the Pattern, or more often linking it back yet again to Massive Dynamic. I adore the fact that Massive Dynamic is slip-sliding between Good and Bad, just like William Bell and Walter himself.
Yes, I had absolutely guessed the truth about Peter before that last reveal at the end of the last episode. Walter had been dropping some pretty major hints, after all.
Questions: when will Peter find out about the truth of where he’s from? Is Nena Sharpe evil? Is Astrid evil? Did Walter write the manifesto? How bad can things get from here? Will Olivia and Peter get together? How much more Leonard Nimoy can I have?
Yeh, totally hooked.
Battlestar Galactica
… the third run-through.
My husband is, amazingly enough, an even bigger fan of BSG than I am (even though he hates Felix, which is SO WRONG). He had been pushing for a re-watch since the start of last year, and I kept claiming that it was TOO SOON – and it really was. I eventually gave in around… October maybe? Something like that. And last night we watched the last three episodes. And we are done. Again.
It’s not an easy show to watch, even when you’ve seen all four seasons more than once in the past and you KNOW what’s coming up. In fact, for a show with as much emotional manipulation and as many highs and lows as BSG, knowing what’s coming up may actually make it more excruciating to watch. And even though I remembered most of the beats, I still refused to watch that spoiler bit at the start of every episode – partly from habit, and partly from a desire to have at least a few surprises.
… Of course, there were fewer surprises for me than might have been, because not only have I seen it all before, I’ve also been following The Mary Sue as an SF-fan watches and reviews each episode for the first time. Which has given me some new insights, as well as a new appreciation of some aspects. Like Gaeta. And Tigh. Tigh’s giggle is one of the best parts of the whole show.
There are a lot of best parts, actually. I adore Starbuck in all her screwed-up-ness; one of my favourite scenes is just her standing with her thumbs in belt loops, with one eyebrow saying “bring it.” I also love Roslin. Well, I don’t love her, a lot of the time; but I do appreciate just how 
complicated and complex and light/dark she is as a character. I think she’s far more rounded and intriguing than Bill Adama – and Starbuck is way more interesting than Lee. Just saying. (Also, how similar is she to the original Starbuck?? Very clever.) I even – gasp – appreciated Baltar more this time around. He is truly fascinating, and through all his reinventions he was totally believable. Also, the hair.
Of course, there are bits that I don’t like. Last time we did a watch-through I remember reading somewhere about how many girls die. And I did a count-back last night, and… well, ALL of the girls die. Like, actually all of the female characters. Dead. The only females alive at the end are two who have already died (oops, spoilers! They’re cylons!). Literally NO other women that the show has focussed on get to live. That… is crap. Utter, utter bollocks. And makes me very sad about this show that otherwise counts as some of the greatest tv ever.
Will I watch BSG again? … I dunno. It sure won’t be this year. I am definitely over it for now. In 18 months? Well… maybe. The cool thing about this show is that it looks like it should age well. I’m sure people said that of the original Star Trek, too, but hear me out. It doesn’t rely on a lot of fancy SFX. The Galactica is meant to look beat up and old – because it is. I don’t think there are too many social assumptions implicit (as opposed to explicit and explored) that will make it cringeworthy – although hey, I’m living in it and part of the dominant culture, so maybe I’m totally wrong there (yes there could and should have been more non-white characters, but racism – or colony-ism in this context – IS dealt with, if briefly). So it may well be that I watch it again. But not any time soon, dear, so don’t ask for another twelve months.
2013: the tv and movies
So it’s that time of year, when everyone does their wrap-ups. Me, I’ve been keeping track of most of the tv and film I’ve consumed over the year, because I think it’s interesting – particularly to see what I re-watch…
Movies for the first time:
Hotel Transylvania * Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter (on the plane, ok??) * Pitch Perfect * Brave * Cloud Atlas * Oblivion * Iron Man 3 * The Prestige * Jack Reacher (I may have fallen asleep) * The Odd Angry Shot * Much Ado About Nothing (2012) * A Good Day to Die Hard * Pacific Rim * RED 2 * Star Trek Into Darkness * Gravity * Olympus Has Fallen * GI Joe: Retaliation * Thor: The Dark World * Elysium * The Wolverine * Ender’s Game * Man of Steel
Total: 23
Movies re-watched:
Die Hard with a Vengeance * Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark * The Avengers * The Mummy * Airheads * Skyfall * Iron Man * Iron Man 2 * Good Night, and Good Luck * Knight and Day * Space Cowboys (in honour of Cmdr Hadfield) * The Lord of the Rings (all three, extended editions) * Thirteen Days * Apollo 13 * The Odd Angry Shot (yes, again) * Snow White and the Seven Dwarves * Nicholas and Alexandra * Oblivion * Singin’ in the Rain * Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt 2
Total: 22
TV seasons (not including rather a lot of Doctor Who):
Caprica (first and only season) * Warehouse 13 (season 1) * The Triangle (three-part series I am embarrassed to have watched) * FarScape (season 1) (rewatch) * Downton Abbey (season 1) * Wallander (5 episodes) * Downton Abbey (season 2) * Game of Thrones (season 2) * The Bletchley Circle * Downton Abbey (season 3) * Newsroom (season 1) * Battlestar Galactica (season 1) (rewatch) * Battlestar Galactica (season 2) (rewatch) * The Day of the Doctor (…twice…) * Battlestar Galactica (season 3) (rewatch) * A Very British Coup
Total: 14 seasons
I would have thought we watched more tv this year, so that’s interesting. Battlestar Galactica has fairly long seasons, though, so that’s taken a fair bit of the last quarter of the year.
Newsroom
Sick of Australian politics? and Australian media? Watch Newsroom!
We watched the entirety of season 1 in just a couple of days. Much like watching West Wing (which is unsurprising), coming back to reality after watching this is enough to cause a smidgen of despair. In terms of the way politics is discussed, anyway. There were a few things I did have an issue about; well, mostly the portrayal of women.
Newsroom is about one of US cable TV’s most-loved news anchors and his awakening to the duties* of civilising America. There’s a lot of quoting of Don Quixote (we skipped back and rewatched the bit at the end of the last episode where MacAvoy starts quoting totally appropriate sections of DQ, and got inspired for all of five minutes about going and memorising appropriate bits of Cervantes, Shakespeare, Milton and Chaucer to spout at appropriate points in time).
It is the anti-Frontline.
The show is pretty coy for a while about MacAvoy’s own personal politics – Republican or Democrat – making the point that that shouldn’t matter, in the reporting of the news; the story, and presenting a balanced/fair (there’s a lot of discussion about what actually is necessary to make reporting balanced and fair) story. One of the very cleverest bits of the show is that they use real news stories to base each episode around. The date is shown in every episode – sometimes later, sometimes earlier, depending on how much of a reveal the specific news-focus is – and the the news itself actually plays a major part in every episode. Like what I think usually made the best episodes of West Wing is when the political decisions themselves were a crucial part of the story. Unlike how Grey’s Anatomy focuses on actual medicine (ie not).
My problem with the show, which makes me a bit sad, is the representation of women. Some spoilers below here.
The women: Maggie, a ditzy intern who clearly has some skills but is pretty insecure, makes some dreadful mistakes and, especially at the start, appears to be in a borderline abusive relationship. Sloan is a spectacularly intelligent economist with monumental ethics who is utterly clueless about emotional stuff. And Mckenzie, the world’s greatest executive producer – recently returned from two years producing the news from Afghanistan and Iraq – sometimes feels as ditzy as Maggie, and only really shows any competence when she’s in the room pushing MacAvoy to be the best he can (thus, facilitating a man). My total favourite overall is Leona – Jane Fonda rocking as an older, tough, “I can kill you with my brain if you’re worth the time” channel owner; but she doesn’t get that much airtime. There’s also a few other women whom I think of as “all the ones with long hair and the black chick too” – because they’re just background characters (which is not in itself objectionable since there are a few purely background male characters too, that’s fine). I do think the show passes the Bechdel test, which is nice; it would take some effort to make a show where discussing the news is central to not have two women doing so. My problem is that these three women do not really get the development and complexity that the male characters do.
Will MacAvoy is an ass. He’s brilliant and selfish and vain and on a mission to civilise. Jim is sweet and competent, hopeless in personal stuff and yet clearly has more of a clue than Maggie (who has been in a relationship for what, a year?) about her own life. Don is even more of an ass than MacAvoy and for the first few episodes I was quite happy to see be hit by a bus; I was shipping Maggie and Jim so hard. But he comes through in awesome news-ways and he has self-realisation when it comes to his relationship with Maggie. Neal has the struggler’s back story and does a lot of silly things but also comes through a number of times as vital to the team (also, is a true believer of Bigfoot). Leona’s counterpart in the older-tougher stakes is Charlie, who isn’t quite a major player but still has some emotional moments, especially towards the end of the season.
The gender development is uneven and it got to me. It was balanced by the fact that almost every episode had me wishing I could sit down every journalist in the country to watch every episode back to back and then set homework. So that helped. It is also genuinely fascinating to have an insight into how a news programme is actually put together (one version of it, anyway).
*Which I always think of as “doooty,” thanks to West Wing and the discussion about Gilbert and Sullivan.
Two seasons of Game of Thrones
I have not read GRRM’s books, and probably won’t; I’ve got too impatient for big fat fantasy novels that aren’t finished yet. I wasn’t sure that I would watch the TV show either, but look at me now… we’ve just finished season 2. Yes, season 2; if anyone reveals any spoilers for season 3 of the TV show or anything from the books in the comments, so help me I will hunt you down and CRY AT YOU.
These are just some random thoughts about the show so far; there’s so much amazing criticism out there that another commentary almost feels pointless (not that I’ve read most of it because yo, SPOILERS). There are, of course, spoilers below for s1 and 2, in case there’s anyone who cares and is even further behind than me.
Yes, I am pleased to have met Brienne at last.
Someone – maybe Sean? – at last year’s Continuum warned me about something nasty in the first couple of episodes of this season, and thought that it would put me off. It’s one reason why, although we’ve owned this for a while, I’d been reluctant to dive in (the other reason being, um Downton Abbey). But… maybe I blinked? Or was distracted? Because there wasn’t anything that shocked me; certainly not after season 1. I would go so far as to say that this season is relatively restrained, in GoT terms: there’s not that much sex, relatively speaking; there’s a fair bit of (female) nudity, but again not as much as s1 I thought; and the violence, while gory and gruesome, seemed less frequent. Or perhaps I am cold-hearted and inured to it all from the first season. Anyway, I thought that was an interesting change – I had half expected that they would ramp it up to keep people shocked and watching. (You can tell me whether season 3 is more shocking or not, just no details.)
Like I said, I have no knowledge of this story, and from the first season I thought the focus would just be on the Iron Throne itself. At the end of this season, though, I’m quite impressed to realise just how many thrones are being played for: King beyond the wall, King of the North, King of the Iron Isles, King of Qarth, and King of Westros. I’m not going to be at all surprised to discover that the end – or at least the mid-point – is the seven kingdoms utterly splintering. That would actually make a lot of sense.
Deaths: Renli’s I was saddened by; I presume that was the point. The betrayal of the so-called King of Qarth was a neat twist and he so deserved that end. The Winterfell maister dying was very sad; I presume the Onion Lord is dead too, after the way he went flying when the ship exploded, and that’s sad too.
Near-deaths: I admit to having panicked when I thought Tyrion had been killed, even though I’ve accidentally seen enough stuff to know that he’s at least in the next season.
Characters: I think the most interesting thing, overall, is the fact that with the exception of Joffrey (soon may he be bumped off), pretty much all the evil characters have been shown to have some redeeming feature. I was unconvinced by Tyrion last season; my long-suffering husband can testify to how much hand-flapping there was when I realised he had organised a fire-boat OMG I WAS SO IMPRESSED (partly that I guessed correctly); Tyrion for king, I say. Cersei is redeemed by her maternal love; Jaime by Cersei’s love. Sansa is finally starting to have a backbone (and menstruate, poor dove; glad to see that aspect of life portrayed as brutally realistically as the rest of it); Tywin Lannister is rapidly becoming
quite a favourite, despite his often despicable actions (this is a problem for my brain). Daenerys is redeemed also by her love for her dragons – that scene where she’s being tempted to forget them is awesome (and I’m always happy with a Jason Momoa cameo). Iain Glen – Jorah – is pretty convincing as a good guy at the moment, but I won’t ever be convinced of his fidelity, given his previous roles in dooming my beloveds (Spooks, Downton Abbey… oh Lucas…).
Predictions – for the amusement of those who know better and so I can see how badly I go wrong: John Snow becomes king north of the wall; something terrible happens to Bran; Tyrion ends up aligning with the Starks; Sansa runs away with the Hound and… I dunno; becomes a nun? Do they have nuns? Stanis comes to a very grisly end, Cersei gets away scot-free, and Jaime clearly falls in love with Brienne, but she SPURNS HIM, maybe in favour of one of Baelish’s prostitutes? (yeh that’s never happening.) Everyone ends up as allies against the dragons who try to take over the woooooorld. I would so watch that.
My year in media
For the first time I have kept track of the films and TV I have consumed over the year. I don’t watch much random TV; we tend to consume an entire series in one (sometimes extended) hit. So this list covers almost everything I watched on the screen in 2012, bar the occasional foray into the news.
Films watched for the first time:
Frost/Nixon * Going Postal * Fair Game * All Quiet on the Western Front * Source Code * Conan the Barbarian (2011) * Tangled * The Adjustment Bureau * Captain America * Iron Jawed Angels * The Avengers * Moneyball * Contagion * Underworld Awakening * Prometheus * Snow White and the Huntsman * The Dark Knight Rises * Beckett * Battleship * Margin Call * Looper * Led Zeppelin: Celebration Day (2008 concert) * Hamlet (David Tennant/Patrick Stewart version) * Argo * Quatermass Experiments (2005 BBC live production) * The Breakfast Club (FOR THE FIRST TIME YES I KNOW) * Skyfall * One in the Chamber * The Bourne Legacy * The Expendables 2 (…twice…) * Total Recall (the remake) * The Hobbit, Part 1
That’s not actually as many as I would have guessed. Possibly because the next list is a lot longer… what can I say, I like things that are familiar.
Films: the rewatch:
Chronicles of Riddick * DOA (I know. No, seriously, I know) * Lethal Weapon 4 * Alien * Under Siege * Aliens * X-Men: First Class * Stand By Me * All Quiet on the Western Front * The Siege * Marie Antoinette * Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire * Tomb Raider * Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince * Aeon Flux * Children of Men * Mr and Mrs Smith * Iron Jawed Angels * Danton * One Night the Moon *Aliens (again) * Batman Begins * Serenity * The Dark Knight * Nicholas and Alexandra * Minority Report * Grease * Romeo and Juliet (Zefirelli * Romeo + Juliet (Luhrmann) * Sahara * The Avengers (um, twice) * Chronicles of Riddick (again, ok?) * The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus * Good Morning Vietnam * The Outsiders * 2012 * Fellowship of the Ring (extennnnded edition) * The Two Towers (extennnnded edition) * The Return of the King (extennnnded edition) * Star Wars IV: A New Hope * Avengers (…) * Beneath Clouds * The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus * Van Helsing * Quantum of Solace * Expendables * Salt * The Negotiator * The Mask (most of) (omg so bad) * Dante’s Peak * Goldeneye * Tomorrow Never Dies * The Dark Knight Rises
So that’s quite a few. Some of these I watched for/at school – occasionally twice in a semester, once to preview it and once with a class. Also, there are just some films that are go-to. I am astonished that The Fifth Element is not here!
TV for the first time and rewatch:
Ashes to Ashes (season 2) * (New) Doctor Who (season 1) (rewatch) * Las Vegas (season 1) (rewatch) * Las Vegas (season 2) (partial rewatch) * Las Vegas (season 3) * Sherlock (season 2) * Las Vegas (season 4) * (New) Doctor Who (season 4) * Las Vegas (season 5) * House (season 7) * (New) Doctor Who (season 5) (rewatch) * Top Gear (season 18) * Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (season 1) * House (season 8) * Game of Thrones (season 1) * The Prophets of Science Fiction (most of most of the episodes) * Firefly (rewatch) * Stargate Universe (season 1) * Ashes to Ashes (season 3) * A Rather Large Amount of the Olympics, inc opening and closing ceremonies * Outcasts (the first and ONLY (sob) season) * Doctor Who (season 7… well the first half) * Heston Blumenthal’s Search for Perfection (season 1) * Metal Evolution * The Deep * random bits of Classic Who * Paradox (the five eps that got made before cancellation… /gnashing teeth) * Homeland (season 1)
This list doesn’t look as long, but of course they don’t represent just 2 hours of viewing like most of the films (all right, nearly four for each of the extended LOTR; whatever). Las Vegas seasons each had 22-odd episodes, for example…
Overall I think my media consumption reflects me pretty well. Loads of SF and action, with some literary stuff chucked in there along with Metal Evolution for some balance, and some trashy but enjoyable stuff as well.
The Deep: a BBC submarine series
Note: some spoilers here. Not huge ones.
I’m loving my BBC iplayer subscription, because it turns out there’s a bunch of BBC science fiction that hasn’t been picked up by Australian tv. Outrageous! The series we’ve just finished is The Deep, a submarine adventure under the Arctic. Be warned: if you don’t want your characters to be hurt, don’t watch this. If you don’t like the uncertainty of Spooks then this is probably not the show for you. Just saying.
The series opens with a marine biologist (I think), Catherine, in a little sub around a thermal vent in the Arctic. And something goes wrong. Flick forward six months and the biologist’s husband Clem is about to go out on a new mission to the same area to continue her mission… but then they get politely hijacked and told they have to go looking into what happened to Catherine and her crew. Basically the rest of the story – there’s five episodes – follows the deep-sea, under-ice adventures of the Orpheus (hello, classical imagery). One spoiler I think it’s important to put up front is this: from the first episode, I found it impossible to tell whether this was going to turn into a version of The Abyss, with aliens or Atlanteans responsible for the mishaps. But no. Instead, this is very much a science fiction thriller, with the story firmly entrenched in human politics, human problems, and very real human ambition and greed.
The story: is tightly, and I thought largely well, written. There are a few sub-plots but they are all ultimately tied into the over-arching issue of survival, immediately and long-term. There are betrayals and tragedies, unexpected friendships and some really, really cool twists.
The characters: largely enjoyable, if not always likeable. Frances (Minnie Driver) is the captain, generally as autocratic as she needs to be but occasionally lets personal considerations get in the way. I do not think that this a reflection of her being a woman – and I thought long and hard about that – there are plenty of examples of men acting likewise, and she is certainly never decried within the show for being weak as a consequence of having boobs. James Nesbitt is Clem, the engineer on the Orpheus, who is a bit mad with grief at being a widower and definitely the most irrational of the lot; there are times where he acts really quite irresponsibly, making me uncomfortable. But he’s sympathetic as well as unpredictable, and probably one of my favourites. The other main character is Samson (Goran Visnjic), whose accent bothered me greatly because I could never place it. I could never quite figure out his exact role on the boat, either, since he seemed to take on medical roles, and be the driver of the mini-sub, as well as doing some biological research stuff. It’s possible I just missed which one was his primary occupation. Anyway, Samson was for me the hardest character to bond with – he’s got various personal conflicts, and seemed to vacillate personality-wise. Of the minor characters Tobias Menzies as Raymond, the salvage/insurance dude along for the ride to investigate what happened to Catherine et al, is most awesome. He’s really hard to pin down regarding motives and attitude – really cleverly written – and Menzies is brilliant.
I can really recommend this if you’re after 5 compulsive hours of submerged adventure. And I do mean compulsive; the end of episode three made me immediately need to watch episode four because it was such a cliff-hanger. It’s not a completely happy story, by any means, but it’s worth it.
No more Blake’s
In case anyone other than Tansy and Terri care, I’ve decided to give the rest of Blake’s 7 a miss. The new Travis really doesn’t do it for me, and I was finding it all a bit slow going. I have read the Wikipedia entry for the series overview (sorry Tansy), and I’m impressed by some of the later ideas the writers introduced and how ambiguous they appear to have kept the tone of the show. It’s not quite enough to get me to watch it, though.
Lord Avon. And some other people.
The Discovery of Blake’s 7 (complete with spoilers)
1.11: Bounty
I didn’t get to see all of this episode because the disc was a bit broked and kept skipping. I saw most of Blake and Cally going to convince an ex-president of a non-Federatation planet that he ought to return to his planet and stop it being subsumed by the Feds, and I saw that the Liberator was under possible attack… but I had no idea by whom until quite near the end. I had thought Zen the computer was acting very strangely and that we were about to find out more about the shifty AI! But no. Sigh. It was just ordinary run of the mill space pirates.
I am enjoying Blake and Cally working together. Her telepathy is of course an enormous boon, and presumably is one of the reasons she is so often used on missions requiring scouting etc – not that she can ‘hear’ guards or anything, but she can warn Blake when they are near. As well as that, though, she is resourceful and good at fighting. Of the other characters, Vila is a coward and Gan has the limiter chip and Avon is still not entirely trustworthy and Jenna has to fly the ship, so she’s a good choice for all of those reasons too. And there’s no flirtation. In this episode, I enjoyed their interaction with the ex-president, too, especially his infatuation with mid-20th-century Earth stuff. It’s a neat little device used to show how weird things we take for granted today might seem in the future; Blake’s reaction to an automobile was priceless.
Overall this is a fairly by-the-numbers episode I think. It shows how tricksy and sly the Federation can be in getting other planets under its sway, it shows how resourceful the crew is… but that’s about it.
1.12: Deliverance
It had to happen at some stage, I suppose. Avon being mistaken for a god, that is.
I think I’m beginning to figure out the general format for this show, and it often involves two parallel plots. With a crew of seven – even if one of them is constrained to the ship (I presume!) by virtue of being its computer, there are a limited number of plots that genuinely utilises every single one of them in a one-track story. So, two plots. In this case, after watching a spaceship ditch on a planet, the crew rescues one survivor and transports him back to the Liberator… while losing Jenna at the same time. So Blake and Cally stay on the ship, looking after the survivor and then being held hostage by him as he forces them to redirect the Liberator onto the course he had previously been following.
Meanwhile, on the planet, Vila, Gan and Avon are searching for Jenna, who has been kidnapped by a bunch of savages; the boys are saved by a mysterious woman in a cave who, naturally enough, greets Avon as a god. They manage to rescue Jenna and help out the mysterious woman, who is somehow part of a group of people who had been waiting for someone with just Avon’s talents to help them launch their own spaceship, packed with frozen embryos and seeds, towards a planet some 500-odd years away. Totally makes sense in context.
Once again it’s Avon who gets to be the most complex and interesting in this episode. For a start, his determination to save Jenna is a bit surprising – he has seemed mostly callous towards all of them previously – and is an indication that perhaps finally he is starting to feel some companionship towards the others. Mostly, though, it’s in how he treats his apparently divinity. Of course he makes light of it at times, and of course at other times there’s a glint in his eye that suggests he could get used to that sort of thing. But he does not, actually, take advantage of it at all. Instead he does exactly what the woman asks, fulfilling the prophecy and her dreams. It shows him to be a remarkably… moral, I guess, and peculiarly honest man. And there’s a wonderful exchange with Blake towards the end, where Blake asks him in an amused tone what he thought of being regarded as a god, and Avon asks back – somewhat archly, somewhat sarcastically – “Don’t you know?” or words to that effect. Blake looks at him, and acknowledges his point, and admits that he doesn’t much like it either.
So there’s one episode left in this series, and of course it’s on the next disc, so I hope Bigpond hurries up and sends it to me. I’m wildly excited to find out whether this is the sort of series that goes in for cliffhangers.
Snow and neurosurgery… and Avon
Yes yes, more Blake’s 7. I’m really enjoying it, okay?? Spoilers ahoy!
1.9 Project Avalon
The gender equity continues to impress me. Servelan appears again, observing Travis in his latest attempt at trapping Blake – more on that in a moment – and we’re reminded that she is Supreme Commander of the area. A key part of Travis’ plan involves an anti-Federation organiser named Avalon: also a woman. And is there any comment on these women being involved in the military or politics? Hell no. And Jenna and Cally, on the Liberator, continue to take a variety of roles – Jenna in particular playing a key part as pilot. And there has yet to be any suggestion of flirtation or sexual innuendo towards those women from the four men. I keep expecting to see Blake and Jenna ‘naturally’ pair off, but so far – nadda.
That said, Servelan and Travis are so an item. She is just so arch around him, even (perhaps especially) when bossing him around and wearing crazy outfits. I bet there’s just reams of fanfic on that. (Also on Blake and Travis I bet, but I don’t want to go there.)
Anyway. The plot here revolves around Blake wanting to make contact with Avalon. Travis of course gets there first – thanks to a traitor – where ‘there’ is a planet that makes Hoth look like a tropical getaway. He captures Avalon, scans a brain, tests a nasty plague… and then Blake breaks in and gets away with Avalon really quite easily. Bizarre? And just a little sus, yes. Turns out this Avalon is a kill-bot. Happily our heroes figure it out before any of them are killed and they turn the tables quite neatly on Travis, making him look quite the fool and getting away with Avalon in the end.
Another episode with Travis and Blake pitting their wits against one another, with Travis getting to be snarky at his capsicum-headed mutoids and wear his black leather pants and Blake getting all angsty at his crew having to break orbit and not beam them out right now. This seems to be getting towards a standard format.
1.10 Breakdown
Aaand as soon as I talk about a standard format, the show breaks from it. This episode reminded me a lot of the Firefly episode “Ariel,” because the crew has to risk themselves to get to a hospital. There, it was River, and the need to read her brain to figure out what was going on; here, it’s Gan, whose limiter is going on the blink and causing him to spin into uncontrollable, violent rages. Blake et al decide to head for an allegedly neutral space station in order to find a surgeon, although it turns out to be harder to get there than it ought to be: Zen flat out refuses to take them there directly, and refuses to actually explain why. Turns out there’s a gravity-something that means the crew have to be heroic, together, because Zen turns himself off for the duration. All very sweet. And that’s just half the episode…
This episode tripped a lot of my suspicions about Zen as a computer, and I’m wild to find out where the writers are actually going to go with it. The fact that it still hasn’t really been discussed just who developed the Liberator, and therefore who Zen originally interacted with, makes me very suspicious indeed. I really, really hope that this gets explained, because I have all sorts of suspicions about Zen being genuinely intelligent, either artificially or as an alien or… something else.
So the second half of the episode is the crew getting to the space station, taking the surgeon over to their ship, and waiting for him to deal with Gan – except that he’s a Federation stooge, so said surgeon notifies the pursuit ships of their location. Oh noes! The surgeon is played by Julian Glover, who I know I’ve seen in other British things.* Anyway, perhaps more interestingly than that – at least for this Avon-phile – is the fact that Avon declares during the gravity emergency that he is outta there ASAP. He heads over to the station… and it’s at that point that my rented DVD started skipping. I never did manage to see all of this episode, and have no idea what the station captain said to Avon to make him go back to the Liberator. Which is just slightly annoying. But the upshot is Avon is still on the ship, Gan’s limiter is fixed, and the seven thumb their noses at the Federation yet again. Hooray!
*Turns out he’s Triopas in Troy, the voice of Aragog in HP & the Chamber of Secrets, and OH! Walter Donovan in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade!! and General Veers in The Empire Strikes Back!!
