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Yeah, I could see that Boucher was going for a Shakespearean-tragedy sort of thing where the protagonists doomed themselves with their own miscommunications and poor choices.
One thing that bugs me is how Scorpio managed to get from Xenon to Gauda Prime in just a few minutes of seemingly continuous dialogue. The drive they got in "Stardrive" was really fast, yeah, but not that fast.
Yeah, I could see that Boucher was going for a Shakespearean-tragedy sort of thing where the protagonists doomed themselves with their own miscommunications and poor choices.
One thing that bugs me is how Scorpio managed to get from Xenon to Gauda Prime in just a few minutes of seemingly continuous dialogue. The drive they got in "Stardrive" was really fast, yeah, but not that fast.
Yeah, I could see that Boucher was going for a Shakespearean-tragedy sort of thing where the protagonists doomed themselves with their own miscommunications and poor choices.
I saw the finale today, and it reinforced my conclusion that
Blake was ultimately a terrible resistance leader who sabotaged himself with his own incompetence. If he'd just told Tarrant what he was doing instead of playing what Deva called his "stupid games" of playing the villain to "test" people, the tragic ending would never have happened. Ironic that Avon, who always was closer to being an actual villain, was more forthright and effective at building an alliance against the Federation.
No, Scorpio was already capable of interstellar travel before they acquired the photonic "stardrive." Dorian took it from Xenon to Terminal and back in "Rescue," Avon's band took it to Helotrix in "Traitor" (after leaving Xenon in "Power" and doing who knows what in the interim), and in "Stardrive" they began in the Altern system, were damaged and limped back to Xenon, and then traveled to the Caspar system to acquire the photonic drive. So that's at least seven interstellar journeys before they acquired the drive (assuming they returned to Xenon between Helotrix and Altern), plus however many trips Dorian had made in Scorpio before Series D (it was a pretty old ship, with an even older pilot).
Most SF uses "stardrive" to mean any faster-than-light interstellar drive, but B7 instead used it as the exclusive nickname of Dr. Plaxton's extra-fast photonic drive. In Orac's words, "the doctor was developing a new space drive system that used light to exert thrust instead of plasma: the photonic drive or the Stardrive machine, as it's known." (Which is, of course, nonsensical; photons do carry momentum but only in very small quantities, so a solar or laser sail would impart extremely slow acceleration compared to plasma exhaust. And of course a faster-than-light drive would not employ conventional thrust at all.) "Space Fall" and "Horizon" referred to "hyperdrive" and "hyperspace ships."
The irony, of course, is that after all the extremes Avon went to in order to acquire the photonic drive, the Scorpio being exceptionally fast never actually came up as a plot point in any subsequent episode.
So I've heard, but it reminds me more of plays where an avoidable tragedy happens due to simple miscommunications, like Romeo & Juliet, or due to personal stubbornness, like King Lear.
Funny, outside of "Stardrive," I didn't get a sense of Avon becoming paranoid and overbearing. If anything, he seemed more three-dimensional, confident, and relaxed in Series D, not as unrelentingly icy and sullen as he was before. Usually (again, "Stardrive" being the exception), he seemed to genuinely care about the others and struggle with the idea of sacrificing them, and in "Orbit," despite how it turned out, he seemed to have a surprisingly relaxed banter with Vila, as though years of familiarity had eased their contempt instead of the reverse.
He and Chris Boucher say pretty much the same thing in my Behind the Scenes book.
They also say that most of Avon’s actions in the fourth series are done more out of a sense of self preservation and not altruistic and they cite Dr. Plaxton and Vila as examples.
They also say that most of Avon’s actions in the fourth series are done more out of a sense of self preservation and not altruistic and they cite Dr. Plaxton and Vila as examples.
I have trouble buying the premise that actively seeking to destroy the Federation is an act of self-preservation. If you're the leader of a 5-person band facing a gigantic interstellar dictatorship with vast resources, the key to self-preservation is to run away from it as fast as possible, not to try to attack it directly. That's like a bug saying the way to survive a speeding truck is to charge directly at its windshield.
The problem was that when Gareth Thomas left and they decided to make Paul Darrow the lead, they had to contrive excuses for him to take on adventure missions to drive the stories rather than just changing his name and hiding like he originally planned to do back in "Space Fall." And those excuses for having him behave in such an uncharacteristic way were rather feeble.
I think it was always clear that Avon was more altruistic than he was willing to admit, like the couple of times he saved Blake's life and then covered for it by saying "It surprised me too." He tended to stick with his crewmates despite frequently telling them he'd betray them at the drop of a hat. So I think that on some level, he felt some loyalty to Blake and took it on himself to continue Blake's mission, even though he covered by pretending it was just out of self-interest or revenge. At least, that's how it reads to me.
Incidentally, I just discovered that the Hoopla online library has nearly the entirety of Big Finish's The Liberator Chronicles and the first two volumes of The Classic Audio Adventures. That's surprising, since when I checked last year, I think they had the reboot audios with a new cast, but not the BF ones with the original cast. Now they have the BF but not the reboots.
Anyway, I guess I ought to check out the audios and add them to my ongoing Patreon review series.
Yes there are only five of them but they do have...
Possibly the fastest ship in the galaxy
The only known working teleport in the galaxy
The galaxy's most powerful computer
The antidote to Pylene-50
And the whole point of Series D was that they knew they couldn't defeat the Federation alone, hence the search for experts and the attempt to form alliances.
And they could run away, the question is where to? Thanks to the pacification program the Federation was expanding at an exponential rate, sooner or later they were going to run out of boltholes.
I think it's clear from early on that Avon cares about the others more than he lets on, but the person he cares about most is Avon (especially after Anna died). He was prepared to let the others die in Dawn of the Gods and showed not a hint of hesitation when it came to shoving Vila out of an airlock (and then made a snide joke about it to Vila afterwards) and was quite happy to use Vila and Dayna as decoys in Stardrive (and he had no way of knowing the Space Rats wouldn't just kill them). Even his decision not to run in Horizon is taken from the position of not wanting to be alone with only Zen and Orac for company rather than a desire to save the others.
But none of that matters without the will to use them. I don't buy that someone whose exclusive motive was self-preservation would even consider trying to use those assets to bring down the Federation rather than simply eluding it.
And the whole point of Series D was that they knew they couldn't defeat the Federation alone, hence the search for experts and the attempt to form alliances.
And they could run away, the question is where to? Thanks to the pacification program the Federation was expanding at an exponential rate, sooner or later they were going to run out of boltholes.
It's.... the galaxy. It's got 400 billion stars in it. No matter how far the Federation has spread, it's got to be only a tiny fraction of that. "Killer" established that human interstellar spaceflight was only 700 years old, and FTL flight was more recent than that. Even if we make the absurdly optimistic assumption that they colonized an average of one new planet per week for, say, 500 years, that's only 26,000 planets humans could be living on out of billions, and the real number is probably far less. And the Federation doesn't control every human world anyway, plus there are evidently countless humanoid aliens in the B7 galaxy. So there is no such thing as running out of boltholes in this context.
Besides, Avon's original plan in "Space Fall" was to change his name and hide within the Federation. The only reason these guys are hunted is because they're actively putting themselves out there in their known role as rebels. Between Avon's skills and Orac's access, it would've been easy for them to create fake identities for themselves and hide in plain sight on some fringe world, keeping a low profile. After all, if the show asks us to buy the absurd premise that Servalan could somehow adopt a fake identity and go unrecognized despite being the former president, you can hardly argue it's implausible to suggest that Avon and the rest could live under false identities if they'd wanted to. Instead, Avon chose to oppose the Federation directly and under his own name. That is not something he would do if he were sincerely only interested in self-preservation, rather than merely using that as his excuse to avoid admitting how committed he really was to Blake's cause.
I think it's clear from early on that Avon cares about the others more than he lets on, but the person he cares about most is Avon (especially after Anna died). He was prepared to let the others die in Dawn of the Gods and showed not a hint of hesitation when it came to shoving Vila out of an airlock...
Of course he showed hesitation. That moment of the subtle emotion playing across Paul Darrow's face as Avon wrestles silently with the decision is the high point of the episode -- I'm astonished that you missed it.
We also saw him wrestle with and reject Orac's recommendation to let Tarrant and Vila die in "Headhunter," and we saw him try to convince Tarrant to abandon ship with him in "Blake" and only reluctantly leave him behind. It's a facile caricature to say he had no hesitation or ambivalence about such things. The only episode that did portray him that simplistically was the terrible "Stardrive."
Even his decision not to run in Horizon is taken from the position of not wanting to be alone with only Zen and Orac for company rather than a desire to save the others.
I think you're thinking of Dr. Smith not wanting to be left with only the Robot for company in Lost in Space episode 5. The reason Avon didn't run in "Horizon" is because Orac had told him that without a crew, he and Zen could evade any attack by fewer than three Federation pursuit ships, and then Zen reported that three pursuit ships were approaching, so Avon needed to rescue the crew before the ship could escape. (As it happens, I edited my Patreon reviews for Series B just today, so this is fresh in my mind.) Here's the transcript: http://www.hermit.org/b7/Episodes/scripts/Horizon.html
But that's Series B. I'm talking about how Avon's character changed in Series D, from just looking out for himself to actively leading a rebellion.
He was just answering Avon's question, "Damn it, what weighs 70 kilos?" Orac was asked a question and he answered it, because he was a computer. (Or "it" was. The show was inconsistent about Orac's pronouns.)
The Federation was probably waiting just outside the solar system once the alliance collapsed due to Zukan's treachery and swooped in with their pacification program.
Yes, Avon and the others could have fled out farther into the galaxy to avoid the Federation, but without a base, supplies and resources to maintain themselves and the Scorpio, eventually things will break down and become inoperable or beyond their ability to repair.
Who knows if there were other non-Federation worlds that would be willing to take them in seeing that they would be harboring fugitives; or once word gets out that an alliance brokered by Avon collapsed due to treachery from within.
Finding Blake and a base from with to operate from could have at least bought them some time.
Edit to add.
I wonder, if Zukan hadn't betrayed Avon and the others and the Alliance held against the Federation, would Avon have left Blake on Gauda Prime like he said he was going to, or would Avon have eventually sought Blake out?
I don't think Avon would have liked the responsibility of trying to hold the Alliance together, especially if there was a chance Zukan or one of the other members might try to challenge his authority.
I think Avon would have gone to find Blake. Having Blake lead the Alliance, with Avon working in the background, would possibly entice more worlds to join in the fight against the Federation.
No, Scorpio was already capable of interstellar travel before they acquired the photonic "stardrive." Dorian took it from Xenon to Terminal and back in "Rescue," Avon's band took it to Helotrix in "Traitor" (after leaving Xenon in "Power" and doing who knows what in the interim), and in "Stardrive" they began in the Altern system, were damaged and limped back to Xenon, and then traveled to the Caspar system to acquire the photonic drive. So that's at least seven interstellar journeys before they acquired the drive (assuming they returned to Xenon between Helotrix and Altern), plus however many trips Dorian had made in Scorpio before Series D (it was a pretty old ship, with an even older pilot).
Most SF uses "stardrive" to mean any faster-than-light interstellar drive, but B7 instead used it as the exclusive nickname of Dr. Plaxton's extra-fast photonic drive. In Orac's words, "the doctor was developing a new space drive system that used light to exert thrust instead of plasma: the photonic drive or the Stardrive machine, as it's known." (Which is, of course, nonsensical; photons do carry momentum but only in very small quantities, so a solar or laser sail would impart extremely slow acceleration compared to plasma exhaust. And of course a faster-than-light drive would not employ conventional thrust at all.) "Space Fall" and "Horizon" referred to "hyperdrive" and "hyperspace ships."
The irony, of course, is that after all the extremes Avon went to in order to acquire the photonic drive, the Scorpio being exceptionally fast never actually came up as a plot point in any subsequent episode.
So I've heard, but it reminds me more of plays where an avoidable tragedy happens due to simple miscommunications, like Romeo & Juliet, or due to personal stubbornness, like King Lear.
The Federation was probably waiting just outside the solar system once the alliance collapsed due to Zukan's treachery and swooped in with their pacification program.
No, because Zukan didn't tell "Sleer" where the base was. He wanted the antitoxin for himself so Betafarl would be free of Federation control, so he kept the location secret. Still, Avon abandoned and blew up the base in the next episode just in case one of the other delegates talked. Which meant that
Zeeona sacrificed her life for nothing. Odd that Tarrant didn't seem to have a problem with that in "Blake."
Yes, Avon and the others could have fled out farther into the galaxy to avoid the Federation, but without a base, supplies and resources to maintain themselves and the Scorpio, eventually things will break down and become inoperable or beyond their ability to repair.
Which is a smaller risk that actively mounting a rebellion against the Federation and inviting their retaliation against you. Again -- just look how well that ultimately turned out.
Who knows if there were other non-Federation worlds that would be willing to take them in seeing that they would be harboring fugitives; or once word gets out that an alliance brokered by Avon collapsed due to treachery from within.
But you're talking about something that happened well after, and as a result of, Avon choosing to become an active rebel. That was a decision he evidently made late in Series C starting with "Moloch" and "Death-Watch," and began pursuing more systematically by "Traitor." What I'm saying is that the show never adequately justified why he decided to start resisting them actively, the very thing he spent two years objecting to when Blake pursued it. I've explained why I don't buy self-interest as a sufficient explanation for that. Self-interest was what drove Avon in the first two series, yet there he opposed doing the very things he embraced doing in Series D. So it just doesn't hold water. Either it's a writing cheat to change Avon's character in the final season, or it's a facade Avon projects to cover up his sincere commitment to Blake's cause. I've explained why I think there's evidence throughout the series of Avon being more selfless than he outwardly insists he is.
I wonder, if Zukan hadn't betrayed Avon and the others and the Alliance held against the Federation, would Avon have left Blake on Gauda Prime like he said he was going to, or would Avon have eventually sought Blake out?
I don't think Avon would have liked the responsibility of trying to hold the Alliance together, especially if there was a chance Zukan or one of the other members might try to challenge his authority.
I think Avon would have gone to find Blake. Having Blake lead the Alliance, with Avon working in the background, would possibly entice more worlds to join in the fight against the Federation.
Perhaps, but then again, Orac had told Avon that Blake was working as a bounty hunter, so maybe he wasn't convinced that Blake was still committed to resistance.
So "Stardrive" alleged, but it didn't prevent Scorpio from making multiple interstellar journeys before it, and the premise that Scorpio's drive was exceptionally fast had zero relevance to any episode after "Stardrive." You could've omitted the episode entirely and it would've made no difference to the other episodes.
After all, ships in B7 always go at the speed of plot, and there are multiple cases where Federation ships make interstellar journeys faster than the Liberator despite the Liberator supposedly being the fastest ship around. For instance, in "Hostage," Avon tips off Servalan that Travis is on Exbar in the hope that she'd get there before the Liberator and deal with Travis for them, which doesn't make sense if the Liberator is the fastest ship in space (which was stated twice in "Hostage" itself -- let's face it, this was often a very sloppily written show). And the Federation fleet had no trouble getting to Star One in hours to face the invaders even though it evidently took the Liberator at least two months to get there (since that's the stated interval between "The Keeper," when Travis got the coordinates to Star One, and "Star One," in which we learned that his Andromedan allies had captured Star One and had been sabotaging weather control and other systems on Federation worlds for the preceding 60 days). Not to mention that the Liberator's escape pods somehow managed to drift to at least two separate star systems in "Aftermath"/"Powerplay" without any kind of FTL drive.
So any argument about the relative speed of ships in this universe is pointless. An unpowered escape pod can be faster than the fastest ship in the galaxy if it serves the plot.
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So anyway, does anybody have any opinions about the Big Finish audios? I see on Wikipedia that The Liberator Chronicles cycle between Series A, B, C, and back again every three volumes, so I'm wondering if I should listen in release order or chronological order. But then, I don't know if the volumes within a given season are in chronological order relative to each other.
I generally listened in release order. As I recall, at least early on, the Liberator Chronicles were more standalone. It's the Classic Audio Adventures that have a lot of continuity from one to the next. There are a lot of good stories in both ranges, though there are at least a couple of actors whose voices have changed almost beyond recognition due to age or health.
For a moment, I wondered why The Liberator Chronicles only covered Series A through C, but then I realized, "Oh yeah." Surprised they haven't done a Scorpio Chronicles companion.
I generally listened in release order. As I recall, at least early on, the Liberator Chronicles were more standalone. It's the Classic Audio Adventures that have a lot of continuity from one to the next. There are a lot of good stories in both ranges, though there are at least a couple of actors whose voices have changed almost beyond recognition due to age or health.
