Blake's 7 on Blu-ray!

[Starkers]

It is amusing how the treasure vault is forgotten/remembered as the plot demands!

 

[Marc]

Zen must have had to have read their minds at some point when Blake, Jenna and Avon boarded, because he projected images of Avon's brother and Jenna's mother being hauled away by Federation stormtroopers while on the bridge; and don't forget the three soldiers/guards who went across before Blake and the others. It's a telepathic ability not shown again.

Thought it's the only time that the liberator was boarded/invaded. Every other time they there were brought by the crew and there was some-one aboard beforehand unlike in Spacefall there the ship was crewless so there was no other way for Zen to repel borders.

And speaking of never used again features on Zen - the voice print sysem. Dayna and Tarrent had to be added, Serverlan was added (and deleted) but when she final got her hands on the Liberator sans crew in Terminal it wasn't required. Okay so Zen was out of comission by then but still.

I find it interesting that Zen chose to project images of family members and not boyfriends/girlfriends. Was there a stronger emotional connection to the family members he found when scanning their minds than to someone else?
You would think Anna Grant would be a stronger emotional connection to Avon than a brother who is never mentioned again.
Speaking of, meeting Avon's brother would have been a good story. What was he like? Older, younger? What was their upbringing that Avon decided to try and rob the Federation banking system? If there had been a series E, it could have been a topic to explore.

I can't rember - was Anna Grant mentioned before Countdown?

Vila could be surprised if he found out Avon had a brother just as when he found out the Avon had a friend c.f Killer (forgotten by the time of Gold).

 

[Starkers]

No there was no mention of Anna before Countdown.

 

[diankra]

Yes, that was the whole idea of Jenna's character. She started out as self-serving and criminal as the rest, but she was the one who was inspired, however tentatively, by the new possibilities Blake offered. He gave her hope that liberation might be possible -- and taking control of an incredibly advanced and powerful battleship amplified that hope, hence the name.

The interesting thing is why Vila is with Blake so early. He likes to play the drunk coward, but must have spotted Blake was his best chance early on.

 

[diankra]

Thought it's the only time that the liberator was boarded/invaded. Every other time they there were brought by the crew and there was some-one aboard beforehand unlike in Spacefall there the ship was crewless so there was no other way for Zen to repel borders.

And speaking of never used again features on Zen - the voice print sysem. Dayna and Tarrent had to be added, Serverlan was added (and deleted) but when she final got her hands on the Liberator sans crew in Terminal it wasn't required. Okay so Zen was out of comission by then but still.



I can't rember - was Anna Grant mentioned before Countdown?

Vila could be surprised if he found out Avon had a brother just as when he found out the Avon had a friend c.f Killer (forgotten by the time of Gold).

My guess is that when Avon gave Tarrant and Dayna voice authority to Zen he also had a higher access and veto. Terminal suggests that might be the case (though there are other interpretations. Vila and Cally can't get access, but not sure they try after Tarrant fails).

 

[DarrenTR1970]

It is amusing how the treasure vault is forgotten/remembered as the plot demands!

Something else that I think is forgotten is that the handguns they find are meant to only be handled by the first person who grabs a hold of them and not by anyone else - I could be mis remembering.

 

[diankra]

Not necessarily. Since the victims were experiencing their own memories and fears, it could simply be that the defense systems triggered their brains' fear responses and stimulated them to hallucinate whatever they feared or despaired at most, letting their own brains do the work.

I also think it's likely that Zen and the defense mechanism are independent subsystems. There's precedent for this in all the times Zen refers to the ship's battle computers, navigation computers, etc. performing their own separate calculations. Zen doesn't directly perform every shipboard function, but is more like a coordinator and supervisor of a team of separate computer systems. So if the defense mechanism did read their minds, it could've done so independently of Zen, and whatever data it gathered about its victims' memories could've been scrambled when Blake blasted it, so Zen wouldn't have had access to it.

The sequence of events in "Cygnus Alpha" is very clear: Zen is silent at first, then Jenna gets her hand frozen to the controls and describes feeling her mind merge with something else, then Zen starts speaking English immediately after that, and a little later volunteers the name Liberator, which Jenna says came from her thoughts. The explicit intent in that episode is that Zen only read Jenna's mind.




Yes, but they hadn't created Anna Grant yet. Nation inserted Avon's brother as a potential story hook that might get picked up on in the future, but then either forgot about it, decided it didn't fit Avon's character as it developed, or decided it was more interesting to create the Anna Grant backstory. Story hooks are like fishing hooks (which is probably why they're called that) -- you dangle a bunch of them out there, but only some of them will get a bite.




Sure, but if they'd come up with something better in the first place, you'd be saying that about whatever that title had been. Lots of things we love have weak titles. Star Trek is a bizarre, clumsy title. Who uses the word "trek," unless they're talking about Boer settlers or mountain bikes? (I find it ironic that Galaxy Quest would've been a better title for a serious space-exploration drama and Star Trek would've been a better title for the comedy movie parodying it.)




Lots of early ideas got ignored later. The ginormous treasure room aboard Zen is largely forgotten after Series A. There's a passing mention of it in "Powerplay" at the start of C, but earlier in "Gambit," Vila and Avon felt it necessary to scam a casino in order to make a tiny fraction of what they were supposed to have aboard the Liberator already. (Although I guess you could rationalize that they wanted a private stash separate from what Blake had accounted for aboard the ship.)

Zen is referred to as the master computer, getting readings from lots of other systems.

 

[Marc]

Something else that I think is forgotten is that the handguns they find are meant to only be handled by the first person who grabs a hold of them and not by anyone else - I could be mis remembering.

Think it was just being prevented from taking more that one weapon per person but yes that was never mentioned again.

 

[diankra]

Something else that I think is forgotten is that the handguns they find are meant to only be handled by the first person who grabs a hold of them and not by anyone else - I could be mis remembering.

We can assume that Avon did a bit of reprogramming as time went on. Particularly a macro so the complex series of teleport buttons became a couple of levers.

 

[Starkers]

The interesting thing is why Vila is with Blake so early. He likes to play the drunk coward, but must have spotted Blake was his best chance early on.

As we all know Vila is smarter than her looks, he has a natural instinct for self preservation and he'll go with the pack. Even on Cygnus Alpha when he believed the curse of Cygnus malarky he saw Blake as the better option, especially once Gan went with Blake.

My guess is that when Avon gave Tarrant and Dayna voice authority to Zen he also had a higher access and veto. Terminal suggests that might be the case (though there are other interpretations. Vila and Cally can't get access, but not sure they try after Tarrant fails).

The worrying alternative is that any one of them could have given Zen an order that couldn't be countermanded at any time!

Think it was just being prevented from taking more that one weapon per person but yes that was never mentioned again.

The idea is ruined almost immediately because while it won't let them take more than one gun each, Blake immediately hands his off to Jenna so she has two I suspect Zen thought sod it at that point and turned the functionality off.

 

[Starkers]

Another contradiction about Liberator is the strongroom and the extensive wardrobe. When we finally meet The System wealth and fashion don't seem high on their list of interests, so why does Liberator have a room full of precious jewels and another filled with clothing?

The real world reason of course is that when the show was created Nation hadn't yet conceived of the System, but does anyone have any in-universe ideas?

The boring option is that The System needed to trade with other civilisations and so needed the cash, but if so why the outfits? So they could blend in amongst other cultures? I guess we don't know enough about The System to really guess.

The more fun option is that someone else had possession of Deep Space Vehicle 2 between The System and Blake et al. Space pirates? maybe I should give Big Finish a call! (waiting for someone to tell me BF have already done this!)

 

[Christopher]

The interesting thing is why Vila is with Blake so early. He likes to play the drunk coward, but must have spotted Blake was his best chance early on.

I did think it was unclear in "Cygnus Alpha" why he joined Blake, but afterward, it seems to me that Vila, like most of them, stayed because he had nowhere else to go, and because the Liberator was just about the safest place for a fugitive criminal to be (plus it had a huge treasure vault).

Another contradiction about Liberator is the strongroom and the extensive wardrobe. When we finally meet The System wealth and fashion don't seem high on their list of interests, so why does Liberator have a room full of precious jewels and another filled with clothing?

The real world reason of course is that when the show was created Nation hadn't yet conceived of the System, but does anyone have any in-universe ideas?

We know the System took slaves. Maybe the clothes and money were confiscated from people the System abducted and forced into slavery. Though I don't know why they would've kept them aboard the ship and assigned dedicated spaces for storing them. Maybe they figured they could be useful -- for infiltration as you suggest, or for some other purpose. Maybe, as an AI, the System just wanted to collect and store all available information and not throw anything away. (Shades of V'Ger.)

 

[Starkers]

Good point about the slaves. I assumed they were enslaving people from the three worlds that made up The System but they absolutely might have taken slaves from anywhere.

This of course would make DSV2 a slave ship and add even more meaning to the choice of Liberator as a name!

 

[diankra]

I did think it was unclear in "Cygnus Alpha" why he joined Blake, but afterward, it seems to me that Vila, like most of them, stayed because he had nowhere else to go, and because the Liberator was just about the safest place for a fugitive criminal to be (plus it had a huge treasure vault).




We know the System took slaves. Maybe the clothes and money were confiscated from people the System abducted and forced into slavery. Though I don't know why they would've kept them aboard the ship and assigned dedicated spaces for storing them. Maybe they figured they could be useful -- for infiltration as you suggest, or for some other purpose. Maybe, as an AI, the System just wanted to collect and store all available information and not throw anything away. (Shades of V'Ger.)

Not just Cygnus Alpha, he's on team Blake in Space Fall, as Avon comments ("Six... and him!")

 

[Christopher]

Good point about the slaves. I assumed they were enslaving people from the three worlds that made up The System but they absolutely might have taken slaves from anywhere.

Yes, that was my thought process. After all, we know DSV2 was in a huge battle with somebody, so maybe it was a slave raid. And it failed, and evidently the original crew had to abandon ship for some reason.

It's interesting that Zen didn't try to recover his original System crew after they abandoned ship, the same way he would for his human and Auron crew in "Powerplay." Maybe he didn't like them as much.

This of course would make DSV2 a slave ship and add even more meaning to the choice of Liberator as a name!

Ooh, nice one!

Not just Cygnus Alpha, he's on team Blake in Space Fall, as Avon comments ("Six... and him!")

Well, yes, but at that point, it's clear that Blake is his only chance of escaping prison. In "Cygnus Alpha," it's a different situation: Vila and the others believe they're infected with a disease and have to stay on the planet to survive, so they've been convinced that escape is the worse option in that case. Yet for some reason, Vila is one of the few who are willing to take a chance on Blake anyway. I think it must be a relic of his original, braver characterization from the first draft.

 

[diankra]

Yes, that was my thought process. After all, we know DSV2 was in a huge battle with somebody, so maybe it was a slave raid. And it failed, and evidently the original crew had to abandon ship for some reason.

It's interesting that Zen didn't try to recover his original System crew after they abandoned ship, the same way he would for his human and Auron crew in "Powerplay." Maybe he didn't like them as much.



Ooh, nice one!




Well, yes, but at that point, it's clear that Blake is his only chance of escaping prison. In "Cygnus Alpha," it's a different situation: Vila and the others believe they're infected with a disease and have to stay on the planet to survive, so they've been convinced that escape is the worse option in that case. Yet for some reason, Vila is one of the few who are willing to take a chance on Blake anyway. I think it must be a relic of his original, braver characterization from the first draft.

Possibly. It's known that Terry nation wasn't happy with how Michael Keating was playing Vila, so maybe he still had his original idea of the character in his mind.

 

[Christopher]

Possibly. It's known that Terry nation wasn't happy with how Michael Keating was playing Vila, so maybe he still had his original idea of the character in his mind.

As I understand it, the first draft of the script for "Cygnus Alpha" was written before the final decisions about the character changes were made. So it would've been written with Vila as the original, braver character, then revised in subsequent drafts to fit his final characterization. What I'm suggesting is that the revision was only partial. They were already stuck with his scripted actions -- choosing to take a chance on Blake, killing a guy in the climactic battle -- and didn't have time or room in the script to rework Vila's role substantially. So he was left doing things that didn't quite fit his final characterization, and they had to make subtler adjustments, like having Vila stare at his hand in shock as if he couldn't believe he'd just killed someone.

 

[Starkers]

I suppose at the end of the day Cygnus Alpha isn't the most salubrious of places, especially for Vila (nothing to steal) plus Gan is very clearly going with Blake and he is the closest thing to a friend Vila has and, perhaps more importantly from Vila's perspective, a protector.

@diankra may correct me here, but I think Vila is the first main cast member to directly kill anyone in the show (you could argue Jenna kills Raiker by moving Liberator but it's an indirect consequence rather than a conscious act).

Furthermore I'm pretty sure that's the last person Vila actively kills until the Federation guard he shoots in Games? When he tells Arlen "I'm completely harmless" he isn't completely lying.

 

[Marc]

Furthermore I'm pretty sure that's the last person Vila actively kills until the Federation guard he shoots in Games?

Games is another one I've re-watched recently and according to imdb trivia you're correct.

Also with the passage of time, watching Games and picking out David Neal as Gerren who doesn't have a much better better fate 2 years later on the planet Androzani Major

 

[Starkers]

Games is a good episode for Vila