vilakins | Duel (108)

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blake's 7 - episode reviews

Duel (108)

Ah yes, B7's Arena episode, but the best example I've encountered so far. It offers more questions than answers though.

Travis's grasp of astronomy (or lack thereof)
"The other patrols have pushed him into this galaxy." Surely he didn't mean galaxy. I mean, space is unimaginably huge and it's extremely unlikely that Travis could find the Liberator in another galaxy--let alone this one, actually. I shall assume he meant 'galactic sector' and had some way of tracking other ships. At least the neither the Clouds of Magellan nor Uranus get a mention. ;-)

Jenna and Keera (as it is spelled in Liberation)
Sinofar chooses Jenna as Blake's friend, and Travis's mutoid as his. Why? Is the fact they were both pilots relevant (it would add an extra reason to keep them alive) or do they both matter more to Blake and Travis than either lets on? Jenna is probably the least troublesome member of Blake's crew: obedient, loyal, and never critical, but did Travis know Keera before? He knows her name and past, but is it from personal knowledge or just having found out about her via her records? If the latter, it can't have been information that was readily available; the mutoid herself neither knows nor cares who she was before.

Mutoids
We learn that mutoids are given military rank and therefore respect within the Space Feet hierarchy; Keera is a Federation officer. Fanfic often depicts them as being punished, but perhaps people choose to become mutoids in a sort of extreme version of joining the Foreign Legion to forget. Travis also tells us in Seek-Locate-Destroy that he prefers mutoids to human troops. However he is quite cruel to Keera, first promising her Jenna's blood, then denying it to her so that she is too weak to chop the trap loose in time to kill Blake and Jenna. Is he being spiteful because Keera does not remember her past--and possibly him?
Travis also threatens her with a court-martial, implying that she is a full officer and is treated as such. Interesting.
It's also interesting that vampire legends and fear of them still exist.
I wish we had found out more about mutoids in later episodes.

Giroc and Sinofar
Giroc is a nasty piece of work, but that aside, who or what are they? Giroc tells Blake that none are left; they are a dead race, so neither is alive (as we know it, Jim). They say that they are the Guardian and the Keeper and that the power of the race is in them; are they perhaps the stored intelligences or memories of two people long dead, or the distillation of two points of view prevalent among that race?

Their planet
For once, the planet looks realistic, pleasant and liveable from space, so I'm guessing that it recovered from the wars and that the forest was real. It certainly looked like a good place for some R&R, it has a breathable atmosphere and thriving plant and animal life, and I suspect that Blake chose a much better spot on the day side but he, Jenna, and Gan got diverted to the memorial area.

The crew
I like Vila playing Avon at his own game of standing close and staring him down. A near-draw, I'd say.
When I was at Star One in 2004, Michael Keating told me that he wrote part of an episode and never got credit (he was joking, not at all resentful). I asked him when that was, and he said it's the scene where Vila and Gan discuss what they'd do if Blake and Jenna don't come back. The film taken of them up the tree had large scratches in it at that point and they decided to cut to another conversation during those bits, so MK wrote that little exchange for Vila and Gan. :-)
Ah yes, the famous Avon statement "I have never understood why it should be necessary to become irrational in order to prove that you care, or, indeed, why it should be necessary to prove it at all." Very clever; one can take it to mean that he does care (as Cally does) but he hasn't actually said that. (Though I choose to believe that he does, at least at that point.)
Gan says he didn't see Sinofar at the end, but he did. Probably not long enough to see what she looked like though, she says, playing the game.

Tech
Blake can use this data-pad thingy to write on the screen! I'm sure that technology wasn't available back then, so that's a very nice and prescient touch.

This is an entertaining episode despite all the unanswered questions it raises; in fact Greg thinks it's the best so far. I'm not normally fond of arena stories but this one was neither boring nor excessively violent.

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Gan says he didn't see Sinofar at the end, but he did.

I think he just didn't realise the woman Blake was speaking of and the woman he saw were one and the same.

My fanon on Keira/Keera is that Travis fancied her when she was alive and "much admired" but that she bever gave him the time of day and he hopes to do better this time around, but is disappointed when she clearly has no interest in that sort of thing. Unfairly, since mutants are presumably programmed not to, but then he's hardly a beacon of justice. I think mutants are also programmed to forget their past and have no interst in it. The best Keira fanon ever I saw, and the best explanation of "why mutants", has to be that brilliant story by Penny Dreadful, "Relations" (in the mutoid zine)

"Why Jenna and Keira" is interesting. I've seen it expressed as "Keira is the closest thing Travis has to a friend" but I think it could also be that Jenna is the closest Blake has to an unconditionally devoted friend. They are both pretty dependent in different ways - Keira practically, Jenna emotionally - and the way Travis and Blake treat them id clearly meant to be compared. Travis is intentionally cruel. Blake is the opposite in intention but he clearly manages to upset Jenna at the end. I think this was completely accidental - his teasing references to Sinofar's beauty were meant for Vila, who hadn't seen her, a sort of "look what you missed, mate" and he appeals to Jenna for back-up because she did see Sinofar. But he entirely misses the effect of his remarks on her.

I like your "distillation of two points of view" theory. Maybe not from different individuals either, just different sides of the same psyche (sort of like the two versions of Red Dwarf and the strawberries).

I think Avon does care quite a lot and is annoyed about it, hence his snappy answer and withdrawal from the others.

that brilliant story by Penny Dreadful, "Relations" (in the mutoid zine)

Is this the same story as "The Killer of [A Name I Always Have Trouble With - Nu Dole Lin, or something]"? I've read this online and it is one of the best pieces of fanfic I've ever come across. I suppose it's possible that she wrote TWO brilliant stories about mutants, but I must say I always felt "The Killer of..." was the last word on the subject, in the sense that no-one oculd ever top it.

I suppose it's possible that she wrote TWO brilliant stories about mutants

She did! I recced "Relations" on

crack_van a while back, but, sadly, the link I had for it then no longer seems to work. It's an excellent story, though, well worth tracking down.

Blimey! I shall have to go on a search...

I tried her LJ name and the only site she lists now is her YouTube space - no fic at all. Strange. It was in "I, Mutoid" and doesn't seem to be online anywhere.

Oh no, that's depressing. I hope that doesn't mean all the fic has fallen into one of those "I'm no longer interested in this" black holes... Thank you for trying, anyway.

I'm just reading through these reviews, and if you haven't found Penny Dreadful's stories yet, I managed to track them down in the Wayback Machine.

Thank you so much! That's wonderful!

Oh yes, I've read 'Relations' and it's probably coloured my views.

I wonder where Nation thought he was going with Jenna's jealousy of Blake. It's made very obvious in a few episodes, but nothing comes of it.

I was thinking that Sinofar and Giroc might not be individuals at all, but generalised examples from the race: a mix of many minds distilled into two AIs or similar, but obviously far in advance of anything the Federation has.

Jenna's jealousy of Blake. It's made very obvious in a few episodes

I'm not sure. The other one always cited is the end of "Hostage" and I think it's possible to interpret that differently. Once again Blake, without consulting a soul, has just offered to take extra crew members on board (when God knows the crew dynamics are already not what they might be). Jenna's queried that before, quite reasonably. I think Jenna's jealousy is at least partly related to the ship, which fairly enough she sees as hers as much as his. Blake's real betrayal is the bargain about the ship which he makes with Avon in Star One - after that, the fact that Jenna still chooses to stay with him when the others leave is remarkable, though maybe she reasoned that if by any chance things worked out and she didn't have to leave, while Avon had, she'd be in a perfect position to take over!

Duel is the ep where her attitude does seem to be more personal, but I wonder whether she's hurt that he found Sinofar handsome or because she thinks he is enthusing about the woman to hurt her. He's teasing Vila, but if she misinterprets that as aimed at her, it would upset her whatever her feelings about him.

She's also annoyed when Tyce is attracted to Blake. It's a pity because I think it diminishes her character; apart from that, she's a very sensible and capable person.

Bloody hell, that shows how inattentively (and seldom) I watch Bounty! I had never even noticed that Tyce is attracted to Blake, let alone Jenna's reaction.

She could certainly be forgiven for getting ratty with most of them there, for trusting her so little when, IMO, she's the only one with anything that might vaguely be called team spirit (like wishing crewmates good luck or asking after them).

If it's the end bit we're thinking of here, Cally, who I'd bet money is not jealous about Blake that way, is rather anti-Tyce too, and with reason: the girl is a bit rude. "Goodbye, Blake. You'll always be welcome on Lindor." does sound slightly exclusive; is it possible the Jenna-Cally Alliance is having a quietly catty go at the visiting adolescent?

Duh, just saw this comment. Sorry. Yes, it's that scene. I do rather like how Cally and Jenna are now friends after their rocky beginning. I get so tired of 'two women = cat fight'.

Yes, I felt sorry for her in 'Bounty' when they were so ready to believe that she'd changed sides. It's at the very end, one of the scenes cut when it was shown here (they hacked bits out to make it 40 minutes long). I'll be watching that ep soon so I'll take note of her expression, but she was not best pleased.

Surely he didn't mean galaxy.

Maybe in the future people will use the word "galaxy" the way Jane Austen and Robert Louis Stevenson use "country", to mean "a small bit of a wider country/nation".

They do use 'sector' for part of the galaxy, but maybe. Or Travis just used the wrong word.

Ah yes, B7's Arena episode, but the best example I've encountered so far.

Agreed. "Enemies are forced to fight one-on-one" is quite a venerable science fiction cliche -- it wasn't even new when Star Trek did it -- but "Duel" is my favorite version of that particular plot, too. I love the fact that on Blake's 7 even the godlike aliens are bickering and angsty, and the fact that Blake's reasons for not killing Travis are a lot more shades-of-gray than Kirk's. Plus, there are some good character moments, good guest actors, and my favorite space battle of the entire series.

It's an excellent battle with some good tactics used; I was surprised at the immense size of Travis's ship though; the Liberator dwarfed the London, but not his.

Duel is always interesting unlike most arena eps which feature a lot of fighting; this one has bickering instead and lots of character insight and wit. Some people don't care for S1 but it's got some extremely good episodes.

perhaps people choose to become mutoids in a sort of extreme version of joining the Foreign Legion to forget

oh yes, I like that idea a lot

And they don't seem to be inferior in the military sense anyway; Keera is an officer and rates a proper court-martial. She's no bond slave like Rashel.

I remember seeing it stated somewhere in the B7 lit that mutoids were criminals in their past life.

Rather than being imprisoned, or sent to planets like Cygnus Alpha, they had their memories removed and their bodies modified to turn them into unemotional, obedient (and essentially disposable) soldiers.

That's the Federation for you, innit? I bet she doesn't rate a proper pension, but when it comes to courts-martial...

What watching Firefly made me realize, though, is how very much the Liberator and especially the Scorpio crews are *not* a family of choice.

Only in the sense that they all stay in a dysfunctional and, in Vila's case, abusive situation, like people who won't leave partners who beat them up. I think Vila must be an extreme extrovert; I'd have been out of there so fast I'd have been a blur.

My sense of Vila is that he's been in and out of juvenile detention, prisons, psychiatric facilities, and the criminal underworld since he was an adolescent. He's used to being bullied and mistreated, and probably assumes (not entirely wrongly in the B7 universe) that it's just how the world works. His strategy is to seek out someone strong and not too mean for protection--Blake, Gan, and even (heaven help him) Avon. That way, he's got partial safety; on his own, he'd be a target for the first bully to come along.

[nods] I pretty much agree. However by season 4 he's been beaten down to a depressed drunk; compare that to the cocky guy with the ready jokes on his way to Cygnus Alpha. Something about the situation in S3 and S4 in particular has destroyed his resilience. I'm guessing it's because he chose to like these people so it hurts more. Of course the constant defeats don't help. :-P

God, he looks so young in that icon. Vila and Avon both age about ten years during those four seasons.

Good point about S4--he really is a shell of his old self by then. Of course, that would make it even harder for him to leave, even if he had anywhere to go. *cuddles him*

Michael Keating is 29 in the first season, the baby of the cast. :-) He and Darrow do age a lot in 5 years, I think it was, but Gareth Thomas does so even more. I believe it was a combo of the tough working schedule and the smoking and drinking they did. Nowadays Keating is the best-preserved and most recognisable of the men, possibly because he now takes care of his health and does a lot of rambling (British for hiking).

I met him in 2004 and have lots of lovely pics of him and the rest of the cast guests in this gallery (http://pics.livejournal.com/vilakins/gallery/00005k80). :-)

I do think the writers went rather one-note with the characters in S4, esp Avon and Vila. Still, there are a few signs that Vila might bounce back if things get better: when Avon goes all manic in 'Orbit', Vila responds with jokes, and in 'Games', he's almost his old self when he can use his cleverness to get the circuit and rescue the others.

I believe it was a combo of the tough working schedule and the smoking and drinking they did

That makes sense. (I'm also inclined to blame the bad haircuts, bad makeup, and bad lighting of S3 and S4.) From a story-internal point of view ("playing the game," if I may steal your phrase), it's easy to believe that the stress these characters are under would have its effects. The physical disintegration parallels the psychological one, too.

While I agree about one-note writing in S4, I also think that it's possible to just see the later Vila and Avon as damaged, with Vila too lonely and isolated to cope, and Avon's obsessions gradually cracking his never-very-stable personality.

[nod nod nod] They do indeed look like people who have been put through the mill. Even Servalan looks harder and older (partially due to makeup--harsh red lippy etc--and her black dresses) which goes with the stress she must have been under as an insignificant commissioner.

It's also a generalized television phenomenon--start out with youthful beauties, and four years later, end up with a pack of raddled harridans. Just look at the cast of Beverly Hills 90210, not a show noted for its grim realism.

Heh. I've never seen it but I believe the actors were in their 20s and 30s to start with.

They were indeed a good bit older than their characters, but they started out looking like remarkably fresh-faced and attractive youths, and by the end of the show, it looked like the had the *actors* in the attic and the *portrait* on set.

it looked like the had the *actors* in the attic and the *portrait* on set

I worship your way with words. This had me laughing out loud.

I think the point of having a mutoid as Travis' "friend" is to show that he's stuck having to take his sister to Prom.

Hmmm, it would make sense if Giroc and Sinofar were just two more of the ball-busting AIs; speaking of technical prescience, "computers live to make your life miserable" is an ongoing theme.

PS--if I had something to weigh in on the meaning of "galaxy" vis a vis "country" I could call this entry "What ish my Nation?"

Henry V reference FTW!

Poor Travis! Only a mutoid for a friend! It almost makes you feel sorry for him, especially as his attempts to be nasty to her run off like water.

Of course he does have the crimos later, but they don't really interact with him either.

Still, there's always Par.

Ah yes, the famous Avon statement "I have never understood why it should be necessary to become irrational in order to prove that you care, or, indeed, why it should be necessary to prove it at all."

One of the most interesting things about this moment, to me anyway, is what comes after Avon leaves the room. Vila says, "Was that an insult, or did I miss something?" and Cally answers, with a smile, "You missed something."

My sense is that Cally is fully aware of Avon's complicated feelings about Blake--probably more aware than anybody else, including Avon. Where Vila, Jenna, and Gan are all inclined to take Avon at face value, Cally's actually been paying attention, observing. I suspect she does rather a lot of that, since she's in a social dynamic that must be deeply foreign to her.

I also think Avon's comment should be read against the moment, early in the episode, when Vila calls him a machine. There's a longish reaction shot of Avon's face, and he looks (for Avon) quite seriously dismayed. But of course he's done everything he can to seem to feel nothing. It's typical Avon: "I'll tell you I feel nothing, and then get offended when you believe me. I'll tell you ["you" this time being Blake specifically] that you can't trust me, and then lash out at you when you don't trust me."

Yes, Cally's an observer and perhaps she also picks up little bits of emotion. She comes across as quite fond of Avon (perhaps she's amused at how he tries so hard to be hard) and in turn, Avon seems to like her (see the tender way he touches her face in 'Project Avalon'). I wouldn't say it's a bond of outsiders because most of them are: Vila the Delta and bottom of the pecking order, Gan the least mentally quick and literally limited, Cally the alien, and Avon the human cactus. :-) I can't actually think of a way in which Jenna is.

Well, I think there are outsiders and then there are outsiders. Cally and Avon seem, to me, to be somewhat separate from the group dynamic of the Liberator--to be, in some sense, alien. Cally literally isn't human, and Avon is compared (not just in this episode) to a machine or a computer. Neither of them is incorporable the way the others are; Vila's place may be at the bottom of the pecking order, but he has a place.

I don't mean that Cally and Avon are rejected, or even that they're fully isolated, because they're not. But they can never fully be insiders, because their emotions don't work the same way as other people's. (My sense of Avon is that he genuinely is quite cold, rising to lukewarm with a few people he's vaguely fond of. The two people in the galaxy who manage to engage him emotionally beyond that get the full boil of his obsessive love and hatred, which like most boiling things is dangerous to be around.)

One could even see Avon as more alien than Cally, because even if she can't go back, she has a homeworld and a society that she belongs to. Avon, on the other hand, is sui generis.

Er, sorry that my comments keep being All About Avon. I'm trying to figure him out, and it's obsession-making.

...when you know I've been a liar all my life?

Really, the best way to drive Avon spare is to (pretend to) take him at face value.

Being obsessed with Avon seldom goes amiss (I was going to say never but realized that's an overstatement) in B7 circles.

Being obsessed with Avon seldom goes amiss

Heh. It's rather embarrassing to be so conventional.

Dude! It's Avon's world, the others just get to live in it. Or not, as the case may be.

My sense of Avon is that he genuinely is quite cold [...] in the galaxy who manage to engage him emotionally beyond that get the full boil of his obsessive love and hatred, which like most boiling things is dangerous to be around.

Although you could argue that, if you know (as Avon does) that once you let strong emotions through they'll have you completely in their grip, it makes an awful lot of sense to try to keep any and all emotional attachments at bay. So he's cold by choice, rather than by nature.

I think of my former Client as, like Benedick, "having every fortnight a new sworn brother," he's just trying to give up boiling the way people give up smoking. Frequently.

If the fandom hadn't already beaten "Much Ado" to death with a rock*, it might make a nice alternate "Rumours" where Avon and Anna meet up again under less fraught circumstances, and he says that she had his heart once with cogged dice. A kind of merry war, forsooth. And he even has beard stubble to shave off, although perhaps the Drake's Venture full beard would work even better.

*N00bs: I'm referring to the Freedom City zine that has a "Much Ado" fusion by Nova, remixed by Your Humble Servant and then by Willa Shakespeare, all as B/As.

*nods* That makes sense, too. And certainly we do see Avon struggling against what he feels for Blake.

Oh, I think of Avon as the lead casket in Merchant of Venice: "If you do love me, you will find me out."

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Duel (108)

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PS

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there's someone for everyone

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How Could You Believe Me When I Told That I Loved You

Re: How Could You Believe Me When I Told That I Loved You

Re: How Could You Believe Me When I Told That I Loved You

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Lying in the Woollen

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