vilakins | Rescue (401)

Due to popular demand (well, 15 of you, which very much surprised me) I shall continue with these reviews.

It's Chris Boucher again, and he does write Vila as fairly brave in this--but still stupid, drunk, and lecherous to boot. Oh well, one out of four isn't bad for Boucher, and he does have Vila save the day. I'm not impressed with how he treats Dayna at the beginning though, helplessly falling over and down holes. Dayna the hunter should be in her element here. Anyway, in general this is a good ep with some great one-liners from the crew.

Vila is brave rescuing Tarrant, and trying to rescue Cally and later, Dayna. OK. he runs straight towards her without thought, but it does show that he isn't a coward when there's no one else to act.
He also knows a lot about Wanderer class ships. I have to wonder how much spaceship experience he has beyond being shipped to a penal colony at 14. Perhaps he crewed on a ship later and his remark about turning down a captaincy had some truth in it.
I also liked him giving up on the lock when he knew he couldn't open it--yay for a brief show of independence.

Avon is always right, Dayna. Always listen to Avon. I wonder why Avon does that little pause before saying that Cally was dead. Did he actually get to her? Was she still alive but dying when he found her?

Cally was one of my favourites (yes, along with Vila) when I was a kid and I remember being very upset. I don't blame Jan Chappell for leaving because of Steed's scripts, and given that the one coming next is also his, good call.

Bit obvious, calling him Dorian, isn't it? I prefer to imagine that he had another name originally but happens to have read some Oscar Wilde. It amuses him after all to provide clothes for his visitors all in grey (or black and white in Avon's case). And there must have been a lot of those outfits going by the rest of the season.
Anyway, how did Dorian know to look out for the Liberator? Did Servalan warn him so that he could mop up any survivors? He certainly knows how many crew to expect too. That makes me wonder how Servie knew Dorian.
And since he replaced his partner many times since, how come the creature in the cellar turned back into the original victim?

We are also introduced to Soolin with a very succinct description of her skills and background. I became very fond of Soolin with her cool logic.

Eh? What's the significance of this?
DORIAN: Everything has it's price, Avon. You have to decide whether you want to pay it or not. That's all.
VILA: Well, I don't believe in paying.
DORIAN: You mean you're here by choice?
Everyone turns to stare as if he's said something very meaningful. But what? If Vila's paying by being in the crew, what's he paying for?

They really should have changed Tarrant's dialogue about being old and tired. I know they intended to cast an older actor, but didn't someone notice?

Costumes - yep, the crew are now all in dull Dorian grey (or smarter B&W) but before that ,Vila was wearing an outfit from a while back. I explain it by him putting it on under his loose Russian thing before leaving the ship, then taking the outer layer off inside the Terminal base. Now that the crew are all monochrome, Dorian suddenly branches out into a rather Tarranty studded dark maroon. Perhaps it matches his mood now he has his sacrifices.

A good and fun episode apart from the creature. It gets the crew off Terminal and establishes that they care about each other despite themselves. And there are some excellent lines.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The official story is that Jan had already gotten a part in a stage show that would conflict with doing another season, as they'd thought it was the last one. Cally was one of my favorites, too, but she may have had the most uneven scripts.

I heard she decided to go anyway because of those two awful scripts, but she may well have had a good excuse. :-)

Avon is always right, Dayna. Always listen to Avon. ....

....

Yeah, right.

The air on Terminal must affect the short-term memory something chronic....

I have always thought that Vila must have been well educated -and that his behaviour is a kind of a "mimicry".

He has an excellent vocabulary! I think he's perhaps more self-educated, but he's definitely not stupid. He either knew a lot about ships when he first joined the crew, or picked it up very quickly; Blake has him plotting courses away from gravity wells and doing atmosphere and gravity checks in 'The Web'.

Yes, you are right. I like Vila :-)

In the conversation, Dorian is speaking mataphorically to Avon, but Vila (not really paying attention) takes him literally. And being a professional thief, says he doesn't believe in paying (he prefers to steal, of course).

Although Dorian addresses Vila, he's really speaking to the whole crew. And when he says 'here', he means aboard the Scorpio. The Liberator crew think they have chosen to hijack Dorian's ship, but have started to find that things were not as straightforward as assumed (very sophisticated computer, guns, and the attempted teleport, plus the ship being programmed to take them to Dorian's base). They're now having doubts about Dorian just being a salvage hauler, and his calm comment "you think you're here by choice ?" implies that they've been set up.

The remark is nothing to do with Vila paying for anything. It's a continuation of his remark to Avon that everything has a price. Dorian has used himself and his ship as bait to trap the crew. It wasn't really their choice to hijack him; it's what he wanted them to do. And Dorian intends for them to 'pay the price' for their hijack by feeding them to the Thing In The Cellar.

I did understand what Vila meant. It was Dorian's remark and the crew's reaction that puzzled me.

Then going by their reaction, they don't let that remark go by, but regarded it as very significant. Yet back at Xenon, they happily go off to bathe and be disarmed. I thought it referred to something else, but if Dorian was saying he planned the rescue and that they would pay, then they don't seem to realise it either.

I took it that Dorian had heard of the Liberator and its crew, as so many people have. I don't think Servalan necessarily has to have told him where they'd be. She hoped they'd be dead in the base and ship explosions, and if they got out of that, the links might well have seen them off. I can't see her deliberately sending someone with a working space-ship after them; she'd know there was always a chance of them getting it off him. Dorian has enough incentive on his own to go after them; he needs fresh blood.

I found Dorian's attempt at breathing down Avon's earhole while tempting him with hints of unspeakable vice awfully funny!

I doubt that either Servalan or the crew broadcast their whereabouts, so how did Dorian know? We know from later eps that his ship isn't fast, so he can't have just followed them, and they'd have noticed if he had.

I suppose he thought he'd try his pre-prandial luck. :-)

Aw, it's good that you decided to keep doing these reviews, this one made me want to watch this episode again and lo, when I did it was indeed better than I remembered. I quite enjoyed it. (Though I doubt this trick can be repeated with the next one in line.)

I also want to cheer at the "I don't have to justify my existence..." bit of monologue from Vila, though it's very sad that he only feels confident enough to make that kind of statement when it's related to his professional role. It really shows how deeply he identifies with those skills, and that he wasn't just making excuses to Kerril in City, but I'm still undecided whether it's more of a good thing or more of a bad thing for him that he feels that way.

I thought it was a lot better than I remembered too!

I doubt this trick can be repeated with the next one in line

I won't even be watching the next in line, except possibly for the Vila/Pella scene; I like their interaction, and she seems to realise that he's not a bastard like the men she's known.

I think Vila has only ever been valued for those skills (except by his mother/family; someone had to make him the friendly person he is). No one but maybe Avon appreciated his jokes, and that stops this season. I think it's a good thing that he's proud of his skills, because he's left with little else now. I also think he's right: Kerril may not have liked what was left; she saw him being the best and at his best.

I definitely think he should be proud! But I wonder if the way that his sense of self and worth has become tied up with those talents could be problematic by feeding into the whole "people only appreciating him for his skills" in a kind of downward spiral, leading him to put up with or perhaps even prefer the company of people who are primarily interested in his usefulness to them, because he thinks that's the only real value he has.

OTOH, it seems to me that one would have to have a very strong sense of independent identity in order to come through his kind of experiences as relatively unscathed as Vila has, and maybe that's what identifying with his skills gives him. No matter what happens, he can at least be absolutely certain of his own value with regard to that specific domain.

Maybe the good and the bad cancel each other out.

I think that's very likely on both counts.

I imagine Vila having lots of acquaintances back on Earth--people to drink and joke with down the pub--but no one he knows well in case they shop him. He probably goes by his first name only so they don't associate that friendly bloke with the Restal on the wanted lists, which explains why he's always "Vila" (though not why Servalan calls him that). He probably makes that sort of friend easily, and with social skills (humour, generosity etc) that just don't work on his new crewmates.

That makes so much sense! *sighs* I don't think I've ever come across a fictional character that I've wished so badly that I could just give a hug sometimes - possibly because it feels like it might actually have made a difference.

Yes! Me too!

I never felt the need to write fanfic till I just had to make things better for our Vila.

Rescue (401)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject