vilakins | Hostage (208)

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blake's 7 - episode reviews

Hostage (208)

Oxygen deprivation and inappropriate kissing.

I'm not that keen on this episode so I put off watching it and though I finally did three days ago, I've only just got round to writing a review. But I have watched 'Countdown' already, so I should catch up this week.

Plot holes
Why didn't the Liberator fire on the pursuit ships that waylaid them at the beginning? They have good firepower, so why were they so defensive?
Why did Avon think that Servalan would get to Exbar ahead of Blake? He knows the Liberator can beat anything the Federation has, and even if Servalan had arrived first, she was more likely to join forces with Travis in order to trap Blake.
Why was Joban even in the episode? What purpose did he--or the massed attack at the beginning--serve in the plot?
Why did Ushton put on a limp? As an excuse for not attempting to rescue Inga?
[Edit] I edited too much out of my original document including my query why, if it was his first name, did Travis use it? If it was to avoid two Blakes, then why didn't they just make him Blake's mother's uncle?

Crap science
OK, apart from being the usual waterless planet that could not support life--after all, one can assume, in some cases anyway, extensive cloud cover, this one is so small that atmosphere starts to dissipate at the top of small rises, and the crimos have to wear thermal suits and breathing apparatus. Yet Inga wears next to nothing, and she, her father, and our heroes don't seem to have any trouble breathing.
Was that shot of Molok exploding the same as the Vargas one? [rolls eyes] Bodies don't actually do that in vacuum.

Blake's boyhood and family
I can accept that Exbar was a sort of open penal colony which relatives could visit as it would be a nice means of showing impressionable young citizens what happens to those who don't toe the line--not that it worked on Blake. However it does show where he got some of his outdoor skills like making fires and cooking the local fauna.
More puzzling is Uncle Ushton's name; shouldn't he be Blake too? I did once infer from this that names are passed through the female line--which makes sense as one can be sure of one's lineage n that side--but I was told that other episodes contradict that.

Inga and the kiss
Ah, yes. People assume she is about 20, but even if she's 25, Blake is at least 34 (see 'Weapon') so there's about a ten-year age difference. If Blake was a teenager, Inga certainly wasn't. However I can interpret her meaning a lot to him as him feeling protective and fond of a small child.
But then there's the kiss. However it was fairly chaste, and when I was a small child I had to kiss relatives and friends on the lips (which I hated) so maybe it's a holdover from a similar custom for children in their family.

Jenna and Cally
They're relegated to teleport duty, but they do very well when Molok teleports up. Go, them!
And I do like the fond smile Jenna gives Vila when he asks for a hand warmer.

Not a well Delta
Vila behaves so badly in this ep, I was driven to write an explanation
for his panic and lack of any attempt to break out of the room being evacuated. He does try to resist and defy Travis. A bit, anyway.
Why did he doze off outside though? Was it so cold despite the thermal suit that he got hypothermia? The 'pins and needles' at the end drew a cry of disbelief from me, but Greg said it's a symptom of recovery from oxygen deprivation. Fair enough, but why was Vila affected when Avon and Blake weren't? He does look very ill at the end, so perhaps he was actually injured by Molok and Avon.

Hitty-fighty
Um... polystyrene rocks, nets, and bear traps? Not one of the better fights. I suppose one could put it down to low gravity and, yes, oxygen deprivation. I do try to explain these things, you know.

A low point.

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Inga wears next to nothing

She also seems to stay inside most of the time, though. I did wonder if Ushton is simply better acclimatized to the planet than the crimos are.

The business of Ushton's name is maddeningly puzzling. One could of course assume it's a forename not a surname. Ditto the limp - I think your explanation must be right. Me, I forgive this ep loads of inconsistencies because there are silver suits and B/A schmaltz. And Jenna and Cally kicking arse, as you mentioned, plus Jenna asking at the end how Avon is - over and over, she is the one who bothers to do things like wish people good luck when they go down, though they usually don't notice. She has much more ship spirit than the rest.

Re your queries about Avon's actions, it's occurred to me now and again that in series 1 and 2 Avon thinks Travis a greater threat than Servalan, whereas Blake knows different.

This is the ep where someone else was originally going to play Ushton but fell ill; Abineri stepped in last-minute, read the script and came on word-perfect. I like the way he makes such short work of the crimos while Blake and Avon are faffing about to no effect.

Abineri did an excellent job! I read that there were two actors who fell through and he was the last-minute third choice.

I can believe Ushton and Inga being acclimatised, but the lack of oxygen didn't bother our guys.

I edited too much out of my original document including my query why, if it was his first name, did Travis use it? If it was to avoid two Blakes, then why didn't they just make him Blake's mother's uncle?

I still think it was a strange decision of Avon's. Why deal with twice as many enemies with a personal vendetta against the crew and a desire to grab the Liberator?

Vila might have been disproportionately affected by oxygen deprivation because, like a lot of poor people who live in environmental dumping areas, he has asthma or another chronic pulmonary condition? He does mention his "weak chest."

He does. At first glance it looks as if he's trying for sympathy from a pretty girl, but he's quite pale and ill at the end.

Maybe Blake's mother was not married. Ergo, Blake had his mother's maiden name. Maybe people in that future don't typically bother with getting married, maybe it's a quaint custom.
Maybe Ushton is his first name, although the name Ushton Blake sounds a bit awkward.
Or, maybe Ushton is his father's half brother. That might work.
Or:the writers weren't thinking about the details.

As for the fight, I did like the gun battle with Avon and Blake against Travis.
I wish we would have had more moments like that, Avon and Blake in sync with one another.
I don't understand why Blake wouldn't want to kill Travis. Unless the actor's contract wasn't up? Tee hee.
What is even more puzzling is that it is okay for Ushton and Blake to kill Crimos, but not Travis?
I found myself agreeing with Avon: Yes, lets kill him now, while we have the chance.
I'm surprised Ushton did not kill Travis. Travis had terrorized and smacked around his daughter.
Most dads I know would want to kill a man like that if they could get away with it.

Maybe Blake's mother was not married. Ergo, Blake had his mother's maiden name. Maybe people in that future don't typically bother with getting married, maybe it's a quaint custom.

Chinese wives don't take their husband's name, but their children take the father's. I'm sure there was some evidence that, at least, happened, but I can't remember. I think Anna is Anna Grant but that might be fanon.

What is even more puzzling is that it is okay for Ushton and Blake to kill Crimos, but not Travis?

Good point! Perhaps Blake didn't want to go back on his earlier decisions not to because he'd enjoy it, or he thought that letting Servalan have him would be more humiliating?

I wonder if perhaps the area they were in simply was high altitude, like Denver, and you had to acclimate to it before being fit for strenuous activity, but in the *really* high altitudes even the acclimated people couldn't live for very long (the rest of the planet may have been even less habitable for other reasons which is why people put up with the high altitude, and minimal arable land.) And since there was *some* vegetation (IIRC) there was some water, somewhere- maybe mostly underground.

I always assumed Ushton was his first name. After all, I called my uncle 'Uncle Bill' so Uncle Ushton... Ushton's limp seemed obvious to me when I first saw the episode, as an excuse for sending Blake on alone to get captured. Ushton didn't want to see Blake's face when he realized he'd been betrayed.

That said, there are plenty of plot-holes and logical inconsistencies in this ep. I still love the scene where Avon gets netted like a fish and pulled up a hill.

But our guys had no problems scrambling about.

I edited too much out of my original document including my query why, if it was his first name, did Travis use it? If it was to avoid two Blakes, then why didn't they just make him Blake's mother's uncle?

Yes, good point about Travis... (I have not seen the show in years, so I conflate/forget things). I suppose they were just in a hurry with the script. I'd have liked it a *whole* lot better if the relationship was more distant. It would have made the betrayal less painful and the Inga vibes slightly less icky (even tho. the age factor would still be there-- but they *could* have used an older actress).

Writers are frequently advised, "kill your darlings," and I'd say for revolutionaries, the counterpart is "Kill your Travis."

My personal handwave for why Avon's brother calls hin "Avon" in the all-aboard-let's-hallucinate scene is that in fact his real name is Avon Kerr, and he chose a simple nom-de-crime. Perhaps it's really Blake Roj and he's a charter member of the Vila First Name Club?

I have them with different fathers, and Vila's not keen on being Restal because he'd be on all the wanted posters under that name. The puzzle is why Travis and Servalan call him Vila too, and Ushton by his first name if it's his.

The "external" answer, I guess, is that none of the writers seems to have thought the name issue through, so we get such improbabilities as Anna calling her lover by his surname. (Did they think viewers would be confused if she called him Kerr???)

But it's very frustrating to try and find a fanwank that works at the story level. I really dislike most of the existing solutions, such as the idea that Alphas all go around calling each other by their surnames like the denizens of a boys' boarding school.

I can believe the "Alphas call each other by last names" because so did proper English gentlemen, and I can believe that The Old Boy's Network will still be around a millennium in the future.

My own fanon is that the Kerrs are his mother's rich relatives and he hates them, which is why no one gets to call him Kerr. And which, in turn, is why several people in my stories call him KM (Mavillon is his confirmation name, after St. Mavillon Grex, the Jesuit physicist).

vilakins: that's why I love FANDOM!

Well, first names are used some of the time, even by Avon. When Avon and Del Grant meet in "Countdown," Avon says, "Hello, Del," but then switches to surnames after Grant makes it clear that they're no longer on a first-name basis. And Tynus initially uses Avon's full name, which could imply the use of first names in the past.

In any case, I really don't buy Anna calling him "Avon," unless (as you suggested) it's an "I hate my first name" kind of situation.

I'm trying to remember whether Blake's friends in "The Way Back" call him Roj--I think they do.

I know. Perhaps if the credits showed their whole names, it might have helped the writers to remember. :-P

And let's not even get into the Anna Grant / Sula Chesku mess, how she could marry a high official under an assumed name, or why she let her obviously grieving brother think she was dead.

the Anna Grant / Sula Chesku mess

I've decided that Manna's version of all that is my personal canon.

All comments here are so interesting that they are much better than the episode itself. However it is impossible NOT to love the boys there! :-)

They are why I love the series so despite bad episodes. :-)

Maybe after Blake started his rebel stuff the first time around, Ushton changed his name so people wouldn't think he was associated with them? Or possibly Blake chose the name Roj Blake when he started his rebellion instead of using Ushton to avoid an easy/direct connection back to his family?

I like to think Vila was saying anything to get Travis to spare him, with the idea that he could figure something out to kill/dispose of Travis before the situation got too serious.

(left that on the wrong post first, sorry)

Vila might have thought he'd have a chance on the ship with Travis--after all, he would have Zen as an ally, and Travis couldn't fly the ship without being 'introduced'--but it looks like blind panic to me. That's why I had to come up with reasons for it.

Nation's Vila would be worried but still resourceful and stoic. Look at him in 'Countdown' where he tries to teleport out before the bomb goes off, but accepts Blake's demand that he stay. Maybe he trusts Blake, but I also think Nation wrote Vila with a lot more spine and intelligence than the others bothered to.

I suspect that the purpose of Joban's appearance and the opening scene of the attack was "Oh crap, this episode's running ten minutes short." But I also think both scenes are useful in the long run for establishing that the Federation is still very much interested in Blake and that Servalan's under a lot of pressure to catch him. She's not just personally obsessed the way Travis is.

You're right that Avon notifying Servalan about Travis makes no sense at all. He does seem to be getting more and more fed up with Blake not killing Travis, so maybe he doesn't quite think the plan through. Still, it's not like him not to properly consider the Liberator's safety (and therefore his own).

I wonder if Vila fell asleep because he turned up the thermal suit so high? We see him cranking up the dial in the scene immediately before that.

Oh, and my own fanon about Blake's youthful visit to Exbar is that his parents were going through a rocky patch, or perhaps a nasty breakup.

That's an interesting take! It does seem an odd place to send a teenager.

Still, it's not like him not to properly consider the Liberator's safety (and therefore his own).

Or to warn Blake before he teleports down, when it could even give him an edge with Travis and even convince him to leave. Being so secretive is strange. Is he perhaps ashamed of his lapse in logic?

Hmmm, I don't find Avon's secretiveness at all strange. He's often secretive, plus I think he hoped to wiggle out of the situation without having to tell Blake what he'd done.

No evidence that I saw that last names were used any differently than ours for married couples in B7.

Anna was Anna Grant, but she had more than one name because she was a CS agent.
She was also Sula with Chesku.
He did not call her Anna. I don't think he knew. Hard to tell, she shot him early in the story.
In Rumours of Death, Avon said to Shrinker: Anna Grant. Her name was Anna Grant.
When Shrinker tells him what little he knows about Bartholomew's identity, Shrinker says that the prisoner said: Councilor Chesku is still -- and th-then he died.

I took it to mean that Sula was that Sula was Sula Chesku aka Anna Grant and Bartholomew to boot.
Maybe other fans have a different view.

Still, females in that universe seem to go by first names most of the time.

Anyway, lets assume for a minute that Ushton is Ushton Blake.
Why would he call Roj "Blake"? Why would Roj call his uncle "Blake"?
They'd most likely use first names, like Ushton did when he exclaimed: Roj!
No need to state last names if you have the same last name.

I think we fans might obsess on this because of Space Fall with Avon's brother mouthing, "Avon" silently. That problem could be easily explained away if Avon's brother was his half brother or step brother. And maybe Avon never liked the name Kerr anyway. People like Tynus were always misprouncing it, or calling him "Kerry" and this would have annoyed Avon...tee hee.
Then they seemed to forget Avon ever had a brother.

I think that might have been an oversight on Terry's part, having Avon's brother seemingly say: Avon over and over.

As for not killing Travis, Blake lamely says to him: That is your way.
Yeah, like Travis is going to take that to heart and learn something there.
I wish they hadn't done that to Blake's character. I don't think it breaks the so called "hero" code for Blake to eliminate Travis.
I think it would have been better for Travis to get away, than to have Blake seem foolish.
But, Brian Croucher's contract probably wasn't up or something like that...lol.

I edited too much out of my original document including my query why, if it was his first name, did Travis use it? If it was to avoid two Blakes, then why didn't they just make him Blake's mother's uncle?

I edited my post to include the above about 8 hours ago and am puzzled that you're replying to the old version, going by the LJ notification.

As for Anna, it's so strange that she would get away with marrying a high-up official under a newly-assumed identity, and also that she'd let her brother mourn her. They didn't think a lot through on this series and we have to try to glue it together.

Well I certainly did not get an email notification 8 hours prior. Something got messed up.
But yeah, trying to glue it all together.
They changed continuity when it suited them and did not think of little things me thinks.
I've been toying with making a fanfic version of my own, just because of things like that.
The action shapes the plot. We have to have Vila fall asleep so he can get captured. But in reality, that makes no sense.
Hey, maybe each episode of B7 happens in an alternate/parallel universe. In this story the characters act this way. In another story the characters act opposite. In one story Blake's history is this, and in another story it's different. Same characters in parallel universes...works for me.

It doesn't make sense that Vila would fall asleep like that, in a strange and dangerous place. They should have given him a reason, like sleeplessness due to constant pursuit--which would affect them all though. In the fic I wrote, I had him have a series of nightmares so he was sleep-deprived.

And all of S4 was in a parallel universe!

BTW, replying to the comment you're answering rather than the post would make it a lot easier to understand a conversation. I usually reply right from the notification by clicking on 'reply at the webpage'.

I thought I had done a reply at webpage. However, I have not used LJ a lot in the past so maybe I did something incorrectly.
As for S4, I was taking that out of the equation and thinking of S1 to S3.
I agree, Vila falling asleep does not make sense. It did not occur to me when I saw the show on PBS over 20 years ago, but then, I was a kid.
Some say B7 was Doctor Who for adults and then I wonder...humm was it written by adults then?
Maybe even for adults, this stuff does not make sense on a second viewing.
So even for this story in S2, it's this Vila in an AU. And this Avon seems concerned for Blake.
I've read fanfic AU's that made more sense, that have less in the way of plot holes than some of original stories. Sometimes I wish fans had written the series. Maybe fans have more time to write and aren't restricted by time constraints and budget limits?
Still, there were other ways for Vila to get caught besides falling asleep. He could have been awake and Ushton could have snuck round behind him.

humm was it written by adults then?

That's a bit harsh, don't you think? Every show has plotholes and inconsistencies.

And this Avon seems concerned for Blake.

Considering Avon saves Blake's life in "The Web," and again in "Redemption," and saves the whole crew in "Horizon," I don't think a concerned Avon is AU.

I was not trying to be harsh at all. Sorry if it seemed that way.
Maybe B7 fans are different than Doctor Who fans, but I have seen Doctor Who fans state: gee, that story makes no sense. What were they thinking?

Plus there are other things, like PD deciding that Avon would not look for Blake in S3. Why would Avon do that he said, he's been wanting to be rid of Blake for 2 years.
Well, I thought at the end of Star One, Avon cared. That would be a reason to look for someone.
I thought stories like this one meant that Avon cared about Blake. Otherwise, why try to stop Travis? Why try to get Servalan to catch Travis?
Just do nothing then, Blake gets killed by Travis and Avon gets the Liberator and so on.
I also think for this story, that it was unfair to have Vila fall asleep so easily. In just under ten minutes.
Even Keating himself complained after awhile, he got tired of Vila made out to be stupid.

In their defence, they had no idea that people would one day have tapes let alone DVDs, so I suspect they just didn't care whether plots and characters were consistent with past episodes - people would only see it once.

Still, the best writer for keeping the characters consistent yet complex was Terry Nation; pity he left. His absence is really felt in S4 where Boucher was happy to have 2D characters.

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