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Re: [B7L] Chris Boucher
by Jenny Kaye 01 May '01

01 May '01

> >Jenny wrote: > > > > > That was a man called Doctor Who. > > > ><snip> > > > > > I hope this information is of some use. Una wrote: > >Jenny, that was a masterpiece. Can we have a retelling of some of the B7 > >episodes now? > > > > BLAKE Episode 13 series 4. Farmer Morgan, a man who looks just like Blake, but isn't, settles down with his wife and young son on the planet GP. He is an amateur radio enthusiast. Sending signals all round the Galaxy, and annoying people by asking them pointless questions like, "What time it is on your planet?" One of these signals is picked up by Orac. Avon thinks it *is* Blake and gets very upset that Blake appears to have been faking his death for all these years. Avon decides to take revenge. As Scorpio leaves Xenon Base, Avon remembers he's left the gas on, but by doing an impersonation of Slave and cleverly throwing his voice, he convinces everybody else on board that they in fact wanted to blow the base up anyway. When Soolin finds out that they are heading for GP, she makes up an incredible story about how she used to be a farmer!However, as Soolin has a silver spoon accent and is giving a very poor performance, Avon cleverly deduces that she is in fact a lying cow. (The inner processes of Avon's mind in this scene is made clear by the way the little finger on his left hand momentarily twitches. AND IT *IS* THERE!) Meanwhile, on GP, Farmer Morgan has started a war with some forest animals. This came about because one day when out for a walk, he got bitten on the face by a vicious flying squirrel. In retaliation, Farmer Morgan captures an innocent rabbit called Fluffy Tail. During its interrogation, (which involves cutting its head off and burning it) Farmer Morgan meets a young cross-dresser called Arleen. S/he also joins in the interrogation, and soon they are being attacked by a group of horrified animal rights activists. During the fight Arleen is stung on the leg by a savage bee. Up in space, Orac tells everyone that GP is a planet that has been bought by an environmentalist group. The initials GP standing for Green Peace. Two seconds later Scorpio comes under attack from the battleship "Rainbow Worrier". The others teleport down to the surface, and Tarrant crashes the ship into the planet, destroying 5 miles of valuable hedgerows, an apple tree and two rutting bears. That night, Dayna, Soolin and that loveable rogue Vila, break into a lonely farmhouse.Vila immediately starts smashing up all the furniture and burning it. He then writes the word, "WANKER" in excrement across one of the walls, before stuffing all the silverware down his trousers. "I wonder whose house this is?" he says, before stealing all the kiddie's toys. But he is soon to find out, because exactly three and a quater hours later Blodwin Morgan and her young son Taffy arrive to find that Vila has eaten all the leaks, broken all their Max Boyce records, and is now choping the legs off their Grand Piano. Luckily, just as they are about to call the police, Avon appears and brutally murders them both. Back at the crashed Scorpio, a group of Tree Huggers arrive in a flyer. They cry copiously when they discover the terrible damage Tarrant has done to their lovely countryside. But then Farmer Morgan turns up, and shoots them down with a twelve bore shotgun. The flyer crashes onto a nest of badgers, killing them instantly. Some dead leaves are creased, and a pine tree gets badly scorched. Farmer Morgan and Tarrant have a good laugh at the irony of it all, and decide to head for Green Peace HQ, "to teach those nature loving Lefties a lesson, or two". Back at Morgan's farm, Avon discovers a silver framed photograph of Farmer Morgan with his wife and son. The photo has the words, "See? I'm not Gay!" inscribed on it in black ink. Avon deduces from this that he must be a closet case. (The inner processes of Avon's mind in this scene is made clear by the way his right ear doesn't move at all.) Meanwhile, Farmer Morgan and Tarrant have blagged their way into GPHQ by pretending to be each other. However, Farmer Morgan turns nasty when Tarrant cracks his one and only joke about the Welsh. "What do you call a sheep tied to a lamp post in Cardiff? A Leisure Centre!" Tarrant tries to change the subject by asking Farmer Morgan about his root vegetables, but Farmer Morgan is unmoved, and so Tarrant runs for it instead. Avon and crew, meantime, have entered the base's reception area. Avon finds a new gun, and as he fiddles with the trigger accidentally shoots a woman dead. Avon, who normally treats women with great respect, and always acts like a gentleman, is horrified by what he has done. (The inner processes of Avon's mind in this scene is made clear by the way he dramatically shows no emotion at all.) He's about to apologise when Tarrant suddenly enters the room. Avon, mistaking Tarrant's bruises for red rouge and lipstick, immediately blows him away. Then Farmer Morgan turns up. "Are you Blake?" Avon asks, "No," answers Farmer Morgan. "Oh, okay." Avon says, lowering the gun, "Sorry to have bothered you! When's the next interplanetary bus due?" Farmer Morgan scratches his crotch, gives out an enormous fart and then says, "You've just missed it." They all leave anyway. The End As you will all no doubt be aware, this clearly accurate interpretation of the episode Blake fits seamlessly into my own personal and painstakingly worked out fannon. Jenny _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

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Games
by padme＠bantha.org 01 May '01

01 May '01

So the newbies are about to watch Assassin and Games, and I *know* as soon as we're done they'll ask how Soolin defeated the shooting game, because that's the kind of nitpickers we all are. I've never answered it to my own satisfaction. Two possible answers that occur to me: 1) She was deliberately slow on the first ones so she could beat the last shot. 2) She's Just That Fast; even a computer couldn't outdo her. Others? Thoughts? Claudia -- "Three million years in the future, the only suriving human rebel is Kerr Avon, his only companions, a creature that evolved from his pet thief, and a hologram of his dead shipmate, Gan. Additional; it has been two months since we discovered the still working ancient cloning facilities in deep space and Avon is running out of Blake's to shoot." --John McKenzie

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Re: [B7L] Re: If you could change ...
by Sally Manton 01 May '01

01 May '01

Stephen wrote: <Surely, if you're going to have an actor play Anna then there can be no objection to having Gan take over Jenna's lines in the Keeper :-)> And he'd pair-bond with Tara, of course. _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

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RE: [B7L] Re: If you could change ...
by Louise Rutter 01 May '01

01 May '01

From: Sally Manton <smanton(a)hotmail.com> > Here's another little exercise, if anyone's interested, in two parts: > > If you could change just three things about the series - with no > restrictions on cast, budget, scripting etc - what would they be? > (Obviously, *my* first would be "don't let Blake go.") Hmm - takes some thought to restrict myself to three, here, but this is the verdict: 1) Make sure David Maloney stays on as producer for the fourth season so it might have been as taut and tense as most of the scripts deserved rather than camped up. 2) Don't let Stephen Grief bail out! 3) Show it after 9pm so it wasn't softened up for the kids (but having said that, if that had been the case I wouldn't have been allowed to atsy up and watch it!) > If you could change just three episodes, which are they and how would you >do it? 1) Warlord. Ditch the crappy production including the bad hair and lightning effect and have it play out as the tense drama that's hiding in the script. And remove the line "Words are no more than words." 2) Weapon. Pick another director, any other director. 3) Stardrive. Make the Space Rats genuinely menacing, and have it play out as the tense drama etc. Louise

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Paul Daneman
by Harriet Monkhouse 01 May '01

01 May '01

Still working through the digests after a weekend away, but I haven't yet found a report of the death of Paul Daneman (Dr Bellfriar, Killer) on Saturday - I know he has many admirers, so thought I'd post just in case. Obituary in today's Guardian (Tuesday), yesterday's Times and Telegraph. -- Harriet "There is a place for all at the rendezvous of victory." - Aime Cesaire

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Re: [B7L] B7 & The Bill
by J MacQueen 01 May '01

01 May '01

>From: "Una McCormack" <una(a)qresearch.org.uk> >I'd guess it was. Chris Boucher was script editor on 'The Bill' for a while >too. You've just made me wish he was still there. Regards Joanne (who might be a little more lenient to the scriptwriters and the producers if they weren't so desperate to give rampant sex lives to characters I couldn't give a highly-coloured damn about. Well, yes, that is an exaggeration, but still...) _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

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B7 & The Bill
by Andrew Williams 01 May '01

01 May '01

Saturday night's episode of The Bill (in Australia on the ABC) was 'Loyalty' by Rod Beacham. Does anyone know if this is the same Rod Beacham who wrote "Assassin"?

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Re: [B7L] Re: If you could change ...
by Jenny Kaye 01 May '01

01 May '01

Dana wrote: > >Iain's suggestions: > > > > > > 3) Recast Jenna, Gan and Dayna. (I'm conflicted about recasting Avon.) > > > >Don't blame the messenger! Just look at some of the rubbish they had > >to spout--Dame Judi Dench on her best day couldn't have done much with > >Jenna's scripts, much less Dayna's. Don't blame the scriptwriters! Just look at some of the rubbish actors they go lumbered with! Those three would ruin any line! Both Jenna and Dayna had pronounced lisps, and as for Gan... He couldn't even die convincingly. What with that big great huge stomach wobbling up and down. Surely it wouldn't have killed him, when dead, to hold his breath for 30 seconds? Jenny _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

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Re: [B7L] Captain Vila
by Jenny Kaye 01 May '01

01 May '01

Mistral wrote: >Jenny Kaye wrote: > > How can you possibly say that you know what he "really" wanted to talk > > about? All you can go by is what's on the screen. > >Exactly. There's a difference between text and interpretation. Text is >that Vila changed the direction of the conversation (from his own >grading to Tarrant's trustworthiness). Yes, I agree. >Whether it was because he wanted >to talk about something else, or because he wanted to distract Avon, are >_both_ interpretation. Yes, I agree with that too. >If you can see that my interpretation has added a >layer of meaning Now here's the sticky bit. Any meaning in this or any scene has to come from the context-- it would be mad to, say, interpret the change of subject as being due to Vila's having taken a large hit of crack cocaine and being totally high (not because Vila doesn't abuse substances :-), but because nothing else in that scene suggests he is mind altered). In that scene you see Vila telling a story, which could be the truth or it could be a lie. You then see Cally and Avon challenging his story, and Vila growing more defensive, then suddenly changing the subject. If you take the line and subject change out of the context of Cally and Avon challenging his story and Vila becoming defensive, then yes, he could be telling the truth and the subject change could be him remembering what he meant to say. If you take the whole scene, though-- why would Cally and Avon say that they think it's more likely that Tarrant was telling the truth than he was, and tease him about Dayna, if they think he's telling the truth and that he's making a serious accusation? to what's on the screen, you should be able to see that >about your own; and should therefore realize that 'Vila distracting >Avon' is opinion, not fact, No. "Fact" is the change of subject which occurs. But in any sort of narrative, whether it's a novel, a play or a TV episode, any writer is going to drop hints as to how something should be interpreted into the surrounding context; in a TV show, also, a writer is going to be thinking of making a scene accessible to the audience, most of which likely won't have seen "Weapon." This thread began with the question of whether or not Vila was lying in this scene; to stand up, an interpretation should look at the rest of the scene for clues about the writer's intention. and therefore not a stable platform from >which to argue. If that's the case, then why do so many threads on the lyst begin with people posing a question about a scene and then stating an opinion? When you do this, do you seriously expect your opinion to go unchallenged, or nobody else to suggest another way of looking at the scene? >None of us are in the business of constructing "tortuous and >long-winded" explanations, as you put it, for character behaviour. But in the conversations that have taken place over the past few days on this thread, there have been long and tortuous explanations, some of which put words in the characters' mouths, some of which refer to long invented backstories, and which don't refer to what's on screen except vaguely. We >each look at the screen and see something different, because we each >have different perspectives and experiences, and thus see the characters >and their actions differently. No. It is true that everyone's interpretation is informed by their experiences and perspectives, and that is what makes for discussions. But "perspectives and experiences" are a different thing from "personal canon." It's the difference between somebody saying "as a prison-warder, with daily experience of thieves and pickpockets, I think Vila is lying," and somebody saying "I think Vila is lying because in the background which I have made up for him his father beat him with a shoe when he was a child." In order to agree with your version of >this scene, I'd have to remodel my Vila and Avon considerably; I thought, when the subject came up, that people wanted to discuss a scene. I didn't think that people wanted to compare personal canons. If we're going to talk about a scene, we have to leave our own personal invented backstories for the characters aside and talk about the show. however >they fit rather well with my version (as I'm sure Sally's do with hers, >etc., etc.) This is reminding me a bit of that salt creature in Star Trek where everyone sees a different person when they look at it. Not only is this denying the author a voice in his own story, since it means rejecting the things that he says which contradict the "version" one has made, but it means that no debate can take place, because if you see all interpretations as "versions" divorced from the text, then we have no common ground on which to argue. >If the discussions themselves become tortuous and long-winded, it's >perhaps because it's sometimes difficult to take off the lens of one >personal canon and put on the lens of another personal canon, >particularly if one has forgotten one is looking through a lens. This, though, is exactly *why* people in literary studies talk about focusing on the text and keeping the analyst's personal views out of it as much as possible. I think perhaps this is why there seems to be very little discussion about the show itself on the lyst-- I've seen most of the attempts to do so follow exactly the same pattern, that of starting out fine and then one participant saying "Well, that doesn't fit my personal canon, so let's just stop." Which isn't much of a basis from which to talk about the programme. If this list is for talking about people's personal canons and not about the programme itself, then I apologise, and I'll go somewhere else. Jenny _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

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Re: [B7L] Re: If you could change ...
by J MacQueen 01 May '01

01 May '01

>From: "Una McCormack" <una(a)qresearch.org.uk> > > >What's your best offer? > > We'll allow you to make a personal copy before we incinerate Animals. >Burn me with it. I knew there was a good reason for me thinking that a Boudicca penguin driving a chariot should be developed for Una's computerised hordes... Or possibly a Xena: Warrior Penguin, perhaps... Regards Joanne (musing quietly) _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

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