Vague. The Liberator could just be further away and the ships are the same size as in Duel. Then again, the Pursuit ships wouldn't really fly that close to the Liberator during a battle, which implies they should be smaller.
Does the Federation have this regeneration technology that the Liberator has? When they say they their fuel cells regenerate, I can only assume that they have a massive "invisible" buzz ramscoop ahead of them, or incredibly efficient solar collectors on the hull... If you put fuel in the Pursuit ship, and it can't regenerate, if it actually has to go to gas station every time they start running dry, it's possible that more than half the ship is their gas tank, and the other half is the engine, which is why there is only room for a 4 man cock pit, even if the ship is almost as large as the Liberator.
Guy, no, they definitely don't have Liberator's rebuild tech. They do have an attempt at teleportation (Project Aquator) which Blake and Avon both worked on in separate departments (so they'd never met, but recognised the tech in Liberator's teleport instantly). It worked as a teleporter, but not only for 'dead' matter; living things came out dead. Candlelight, yep, I had a rewatch of that: I like your perspective fiddle, but the shot does tend to support the stupidly big pursuit ship option! Interesting thing about that sequence is that most of it uses the smaller Liberator model they built for season two, but that shot uses the original one (presumably because they didn't have any new pursuit ship models, so if they'd used them with the new Liberator they'd have been bigger than her). You can spot the difference in the models because the 'struts' on the new one are thicker than those on the larger original (for obvious reasons); also the line patterns on the green globe don't match (though this is trickier to latch down, as they had to replace the globe on the big model every time the light inside it melted the globe, and didn't always reproduce the lines accurately; that was the main reason for building a new model, and also why they thought about getting in a new ship every season before abandoning the idea until it became unavoidable).
A new ship every series would seem to be a bit of an unessesary faff really, and unless they were going to go down the Scorpio clapped out old banger route much earlier it would neccesitate them finding The Most Powerful Ship in the Univese every year. Obviously Scorpio had teleport and soon became the fastest ship around (was it supposed to be faster than Liberator? Is it possible to reconcile Zen's 'Standard by insert number here' with the more widely used Time Distort #? ) but I don't think you could pull that trick off more than once. By the way have I ever explained my "Voyager is Blakes 7" notion?
C11: MOLOCH Ben Steed's wife must get the shit kicked out of her fairly often. His scripts are very masculine and mysogynist. Servalan is guillible in this one, Cally gets the least amount of work all season and Tarrant goes back to being a douchebag. The climax is rushed, with Steed trying to get all the supporting characters killed off as fast as possible. And then there's Moloch, who is a bit better than the creature in The Web, but only by a little.
C12: DEATH WATCH I know this one rings well with fans but I find it the most boring script of the season. Nothing much happens for the entire episode, except for a couple of shootouts. The direction however is the best in the entire series, with very creative camera work and sets, including a great point of view shot from Orac. Pacey plays both roles well, given more to do than Chappell did in Children of Auron. Servalan is used for the sake of being used. I loved the interplay between Vila and the rest of the characters, particularly when he chases Cally off the flight deck. The cocktail tray that appears between scenes in awesome. Despite my reservations, well done to Chris Boucher for nailing reality TV 30 years ahead of it's time.
Ok then. Firstly I’d like to add the caveat that the similarity really boils down to seasons 1 and 2, in fact probably mainly the Seska arc of Season 2… Voayger is the Liberator: The most technologically advanced spaceship in known space, the only ship with a working transporter/teleporter and a ship countless people would love to get their hands on. Janeway is Blake: Arrogant, self-righteous, determined that her/his way is the right way, no matter the cost. Chakotay is Avon: Ok he’s not nearly as cool, but it’s important to remember that, in the first couple of years, Beltran wasn’t just phoning it in, and Chakotay had a nice line in dry humour. Check out his ripostes whilst Cullah is having him beaten, plus there’s his relationship with Seska. The Doctor is Vila: Slightly weasely, cowardly, capable of rising to the occasion when the need arises. Tom is Jenna: Ace pilot, blonde, on the wrong side of the law but desperate to go straight and to believe in Janeway/Blake. Kes is Cally: Alien, serene, telepathic, tends to get possessed a lot! Seska is Servalan: Manipulative, ruthless, determined to take control of Voyager/Liberator. I can see the argument for Moloch being mysogonistic, the whole “Give her to your men,” bit, but you could argue that it’s also, sadly, quite a realistic portrayal of what an occupying army would do. Mococh himself is quite poorly realised, and you’re right everything does get tied up very quickly. I kinda like it though, I get a kick out of seeing Tarrant back in Federation uniform, and Vila in uniform too, I like Vila’s friendship with that deranged bloke, and I love seeing Vila and Servalan interacting. I’m pretty sure that’s the only time they ever do. Death Watch has always been a favourite of mine, I think I just always liked the notion of the combat grounds. Never mind reality TV, given they don’t know what kind of environment they’re going to have to fight in you could make an argument for it predating the Hunger Games as well. Pacey is good in both roles and I love that little moment between Vila and Cally.
It wasn't that they were thinking of having a new ship each season, just that at the start of each season they started by saying "Liberator is a problem, the set is noisy, the FX people say the model is a pain, let's replace it..." and then they decided that doing so would cause even more problems. But even so, the idea would resurface the next year. Don;t think we ever got any comparison between TD and Standard, except in Stardrive which treats them as equivalent (which clearly isn;t the case: in Cygnus Alpha Blake just says Standard Speed to Zen as he doesn't know what Liberator is capable of, and it becomes a habit. Though Standard is presumably pretty slow, as we only ever hear Standard by Five, Seven, etc, later). They may not even translate smoothly, if Liberator's drive uses totally different principles to the Federation TD, or the photonic drive (like the TOS warp factor being SOL-cubed, according to fanon, whereas the TNG version is related to the power input and quantum transitions within that).
On Voyager=Blake, of course Farscape matches just as well in most ways... Crais: Enemy commander with an obsessive grudge against the hero who eventually goes rogue (Travis). Rygel: Self, cowardly, occasionally rises to the occasion (Vila). D'argo: Strongman who's a murderer, except there's an explanation relating to his wife that puts him in a better light (Gan). Pilot... Zen, obviously. Zhaan: Compassionate telepathic alien with a harsher hidden side to her (Cally). Starts to break down a bit with Aeryn=Jenna, and trying to make Crichton either Blake or Avon gets a bit strained... though Harvey being put into Blake's head is a bit like his false memories, thinking about it.
Watched 'Blake' again. Was just thinking could the crew have been just stunned? Everyone that was shot had no visible wounds or blood, yet when Avon shot Blake he was pretty bloody. I know in the show they were rather lazy about not showing any wounds when some one got shot. So was it intentional? or just being cheap about showing wounds?
Gareth Thomas wanted it unequivocally clear that Roj Blake was dead, kaput, deceased, terminated so Avon had the different gun and Thomas the blood packs. I'm not sure we ever saw much in the way of visible injury to when people were killed by Federation weapons. Two killed in Volcano did have big burn marks but can't remember any other standouts. Secondly there was never any indication that Federation weapons (or the Liberator guns for that matter had stun settings). In fact Dayna made the comment in Rescue that she had tried to develop a gun that the settings could be changed e.g kill/stun but never got it to work.
It varies from episode to episode: for instance, in most episodes people shot with the Liberator handguns just drop, but in some (Project Avalon, I think), you can see missed shots causing little blasts on the walls behind the target, while in Star One there's a flash on the body of the victims, and blood spattered on the wall behind them (which possibly was allowed because the victims then turn out not to be human). So it seems to have been a directorial (and hence maybe budget-related) choice, whether to spend time and money on wiring up explosive squibs. In Blake, there was a deliberate intention to have everyone shot with a different type of gun, so that they could be stunned or killed depending on the cast's availability if there was a season five (Dayna is shot with Arlen's handgun, Vila with a standard Federation sidearm [but we've seen them used to stun back in Project Avalon], Soolin and Tarrant with other designs - actually left overs built as possibles for the Scorpio kit-guns at the start of the season). Though I think that Tarrant may actually be shot with a gun that's already been used on Vila or Soolin.
Thought the guns in Project Avalon were modified to reduce charge rather than stun because Servelan and Travis wanted them to escape rather than being set to stun (in fact Travis makes a point to check if a trooper has drawn his "special" gun). Stun wouldn't have made sense in the situation as it's almost as hard to escape when stunned as when dead.
Is it heresy to say I prefer Time Distort to Standard by..? One of these days I really should watch Farscape! There's also Andromeda. At least early Andromeda anyway. Dylan = Blake Tyr = Avon Trance = Cally Bekka = Jenna Rommie= Zen Harper = Vila (maybe?) Andromeda = Liberator.
Blake's gun in Seek locate Destroy causes an explosion which throws a guard across a corridor. Unless the door was made of flammable gas or something.
Yes, and that scene you mention makes it clear that the Avalon troopers haven't just been told to put their weapon on a different setting, they've been issued with a modified weapon built into the same casing. Nevertheless, it's a precedent for something that looks like the standard sidearm being non-lethal if the plot demands. Wonder what Trooper Parr would have said about Avalon, in view of his Trial comments about how Travis "didn't get you killed unnecessarily." Unles Blake and co were also shooting to stun, Travis let a handful of Federation troopers die so Blake would think the escape was for real. (He'd do it, of course, but it's an interesting contrast to the way he's written in Trial).
Travis would argue that as it was part of the attempt to capture Blake and the Liberator, I think he'd argue they weren't killed unnecessarily. Same as Javik when he sacrificed some pursuit ships to try and capture the Liberator in Harvest of Kairos. And speaking of Project Avalon, was watching it this afternoon and low and behold what does Servalan bring with her? Male mutoids (going back to an earlier discussion about whether there was such a thing).
Jarvik ensured those pursuit ships were either unmanned or crewed by Mutoids didn't he? But yeah I'd agree with your point, just because Travis never wasted troopers unnecessarily, doesn't mean he wouldn't waste them if he found it neccesary.