Blakes7

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5511 discussions

Hello?
by Andrew Williams 17 Jan '02

17 Jan '02

Tereth wrote: >>Liberator is destroyed, the brain becomes unstable. This could be matched up >>with Avon's s4 behaviour (if you think he was irrational). >This has got to be one of the best rationalities for Avon's behavior. >One problem how does the brain transfer itsself to Avon? It was Jenna who >was scanned. Maybe Avon and Blake both tried it to see if anything would >happen or maybe the brain used the defense globe to transfer to Avon? I >don't know. But would it be possible for the brain to survive in a human >mind. The Altas and their slaves were humanoid in appearance, so you could assume that the mental equipment was compatible. The defence mechanism makes the best plot device for the transfer as all three were affected by it. Also, if you remember the episode, there are some shots of a strange brain-looking thing at the time! >Or did the brain run the System? Maybe it only ran part of the >System maybe the Scientific part?

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RE: [B7L] Hello?
by Sally M 17 Jan '02

17 Jan '02

Leia wrote: "Or just Auron biology, they don't necesarily age at the same rate as us. Cally's age is never given as far as I can recall." which made me think - maybe this could explain the way Cally *mentally* ages so much faster than the rest, going from the overwrought, very young-seeming fanatic in her first episodes (gueilla teenager) to earth-motherly in S3, and almost middle-aged towards the end of her time. While she doesn't age much physically, maybe Aurons pay for their 'superior' mental skills by a faster mental ageing process. Just a thought. _________________________________________________________________ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com

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Rewatching 'Games'
by Leia Fee 17 Jan '02

17 Jan '02

In a moment of reenatorish panic I suddenly realised that I'm going to freeze to death in a few eeeks if I don't finish my nice warm wool tunic which I started redecorating at the end of last season thinking, 'Ah, plenty of time to get it done for York' is still not half finished. Frantic kit-making in front of the telly is becoming something of a fine tradition and the video at the top of the pile was one of my B7 ones so I settled down to see how many times I could stab myself in the finger. So here are my rather random collection of thoughts on _Games_ I like this episode a lot. More or less everyone gets something interesting to do - well except that Avon seems to spend the entire episode yelling at everyone else and not actually doing anything very useful himself. Mind you, almost everyone manages to screw up as well. Vila letting the guard spot him,Tarrant and Dayna getting themselves trapped, *all* of them falling for Belkov's game. Almost everyone's double crossing almost everyone else - it's very B7 ;-) A lot of the exchanges among the crew are so much fun. Little offhand remarks that really make you believe these people have been working and living together a long time and for all their bickering do get along pretty well. The scene where they find the stabbed guard is one of the best examples - Vila's quip to Dayna about improving the guns and the exchange between Tarrant and Dayna... TARRANT: Good shot though. If he hadn't already been dead, you'd have saved our lives for certain. DAYNA: Oh, do I get a prize? TARRANT: Sorry, disqualified on a technicality. Incidentally why on earth (Or Mecron 2 for that matter) does Vila take that knife with him! And why on any planet does Tarrant leave Vila as back-up? Okay he does manage to pull off a rather good one-man rescue, but only because Avon wouldn't bring him back up to the ship as he asked. (Which by the way leads to another of my favourite lines.... VILA: Oh nothing much, I've been shot at, trodden on, nearly captured twice and now I think they're trying to blow me up. A fairly average day. You know. Either Belkov needs to get some better computer security or Vila is much better at sweet-talking computers than Mr-computer-tech Avon. Computer games, even rather lethal ones, seem an odd way to protect anything. I can forgive it though for the amusement factor of seeing the way there's a game just cut out for each of the people who go over to the Orbiter - oh, and for the look on Tarrant's face when Vila grabs his foot. ;-) Leia

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Hello?
by Andrew Williams 17 Jan '02

17 Jan '02

Ellynne wrote: >This requires two Avons (sort of). Instead of two Avons you could have Avon & the System brain. The System brain follows the path you suggested, gets into Liberator and breaks away from the System. The System crew abandon ship because the DSV is out of control. Avon comes aboard, and the brain recognises him as being a suitable host (on the basis of, say, intellectual capacity or dress sense or whatever). Therefore the brain somehow transfers itself into Avon (rather than a blank clone). This means both characters can keep their separate backgrounds, and you can account for any of Avon's bad decisions or behaviour on the basis that two minds are fighting for dominance of the body. Perhaps if one wins, the other ceases to be? Further, you could have Avon fixate on Blake & the brain on Liberator. Avon partly knows what is happening to him, without fully understanding it. Avon flys the Liberator through the enzyme cloud on route to Terminal, intending to at least damage it (a blow against the brain). Liberator is destroyed, the brain becomes unstable. This could be matched up with Avon's s4 behaviour (if you think he was irrational). On GP, the brain takes control in a last-ditch effort and shoots Blake, punishing Avon for the loss of the Liberator. It then dies, finally leaving Avon in control of himself. Avon looks down, sees Blake, looks around, sees the troopers....

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Hello?
by Ellynne G. 16 Jan '02

16 Jan '02

Anybody there? Well, since it's quiet, I thought I'd toss out story thoughts I've been playing with. I've generally assumed that Zelda was close to Cally in age and that they'd been raised together. What if they hadn't? What if, due to either genetic engineering or good skin care products, Zelda was Cally's senior by a generation or so? And that Cally was her clone in the more traditional sense of the word, a daughter twin? For this to work, I'd have to guess Cally's parents were foster parents (although, for that distorted reflection thing to work with the rock, I've usually assume they were biological). Suppose being able to adopt a clone of a highly valued citizen was a great privilege, but that part of Cally's rebellious streak came out of everyone expecting her to be just like Zelda? If nothing else, I think it puts a different spin on Zelda's last words if she's telling her _daughter_ that even Servalan's children deserve a chance to live. It also makes Cally's decision _not_ to help raise the 5,000 a bit more interesting - a break with the past on more than one level. A while back, I was toying with the idea of Avon being a refugee from the System and the Liberator actually being something he'd designed. Hence, his extreme possessiveness of it. It had some obvious problems (the big one being that Avon seemed to have a very established history in the Federation and that he obviously made things as complicated as possible to _get_ the Liberator instead of finding a way to take it with him in the first place). Well, I kept toying with it and came up with a slightly different scenario. This requires two Avons (sort of). Avon 1: Either an acquisition or a creation of the System. Pretty much down to just being a preserved brain at the beginning of all this whose intellectual talents the System uses. He's at least partially separate from whatever the Altas are wired into to keep the intellectual originality they valued in him in the first place functional. Avon 2: Avon 1 is understandably less than happy with his situation. Escaping himself is borderline physically impossible (brains in a jar require such a support network, etc) besides the basic fact that a brain in a jar can't get out of the jar regardless of where the jar happens to be. Solution? Well, the usual plot device would seem to be a clone body that he could download his own mind into. The problem being that a clone of him in the System would probably not have a much better chance of escaping before joining the canned cranium club. So, the answer is to somehow get the clone _outside_ the System. Still working on details. Some SF stories have allowed for the use of adopted embryos on colony worlds to keep the gene pool from becoming to limited. It's possible I could have the Federation doing this. If the Clone Masters played some part in this sort of thing, I wouldn't even have to work out the technicalities of transporting the embryo from the System, just the technicalities of one entity in the System being able to download a computer coded DNA sequence when the Clone Masters do a mass runoff (or possibly multiples and our Avon was the only one who made it to the right place at the right time?). The chain of circumstances that got Avon on the prison ship may be a bit more suspicious (I'm working on alternatives to 'unbelievable coincidence'), but he's in the the right place at the right time to meet up with Liberator. Avon 1 had downloaded everything he needed to - and provided his alternate self with everything he might need in the way of a comfortable, defendable home with large cash reserves (and clothes in his size). The 'defense mechanism' that killed the first people to come on the ship _wasn't_ a defense mechanism - it was the attempted mental download. As for getting the ship out. Most of this fell under Avon 1's duties - designing and programing the ship. He'd been fairly cooperative for ages and the System didn't know he had anything to gain through sabotage. I don't wish to be unkind to Avon's father, but I think living in a jar and having no contact with any living beings besides his jailer-exploiters may have effected his perspective. Or maybe he just wasn't a nice guy. The fact that the attempted download would _kill_ anyone besides Avon was evidently not considered a problem (and there is the question of what happened to the crew). As for the illusion of close relatives in trouble, Avon saw his rather senior twin brother (years of being in a jar apparently colored the guy's perspective of what he looked like). Technically true and designed to trigger something that would make him open up his mind, etc. Obviously, Blake interrupting the download was not part of the program, but Zen was there as back up. Perhaps the idea was to have some sort of back up if Avon _wasn't_ ready for the download (hence, Jenna is the one Zen contacts directly since her mind was expendable [in Zen's defense, he could have been following programing without knowing whys and wherefores]). Ergo, all those details and bits of information Zen was unwilling to share because Avon was deemed 'unready' (more to the point, Avon might have taken some steps to protect himself if he'd realized what he was in for). Since plan A failed, it was onto plan B. Eventually, when the time was right, Zen was forced to take Avon to the System. Now, just suppose that most of that episode was a 'back to reality' illusion being fed into the others' minds while Avon had his meeting with his maker. Hmm, I wonder if the resident telepath noticed something was going on? OK, that's my bit for getting conversation started. Hope it does some good. Ellynne ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/web/.

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Re: [B7L] The Wrong Lie?
by Natasa Tucev 16 Jan '02

16 Jan '02

Here's a thought that troubles me. If you've captured a stubborn, very-difficult-to-break rebel leader and you want to make him recant, confess his crimes, betray the hideout of his comrades who are still free, etc., and if you've also captured his family, won't you use them to blackmail him? What if brainwashing wasn't attempted right away? What if the Federation threatened to kill Blake's brother and sister (preferably in some painful and prolongued manner), unless Blake betrayed the resistance? And what did he say to that? Shudder. I don't like this idea at all, but it could be a possible explanation for The Wrong Lie. Such a memory would be very difficult to erase, unless you replace it by something else. N.

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Re: [B7L] The Wrong Lie?
by Ellynne G. 15 Jan '02

15 Jan '02

On Sat, 12 Jan 2002 22:52:23 -0500 "Dana Shilling" <dshilling(a)worldnet.att.net> writes: > Thanks to all for the replies. However, > if you don't know you've been mind-wiped > until after the mind-wipe fails, you might > present a vivid counter-example to others, > but YOU aren't suffering. Besides the control issue - and I think the Federation was always willing during S1 to sacrifice just about anyone and anything for expediency an control. So, it's not a big issue to them to sacrifice three children to make a convincing case against Blake. In the same way, if they could crush opposition more effectively by making Blake a happy citizen, that's what they would (and did) do. OTOH, if we insist on a revenge motive, the person in charge of Blake's case may have been the kind to get a sick pleasure out of what was done to him. Maybe this person would occasionally stop by and chat, enjoying how the brainwashed Blake was so impressed that a high ranking, government official could be so friendly and egalitarian, asking questions about his family and how he was doing, etc. Making Blake into a trusting, subserviant, timid, tow the line citizen _was_ the revenge. Ellynne ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/web/.

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Re: [B7L] The Wrong Lie?
by Sally M 14 Jan '02

14 Jan '02

Harriet wrote: "A few warped individuals may like hurting people, but I believe the system, and most of those running it, are more interested in control than punishment as such." I think this is born out by the Dr Havant-Alta Morag scene in The Way back; they're quite disinterested in whether the fake charges are going to hurt Blake personally, just whether the charges will do the necessary job of discrediting him. To these two, Blake is not a dissenter to be punished but an administrative problem to be solved, and the abuse of children just a clerical detail. _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx

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Re: [B7L] Which female characters to write about
by Marian de Haan 14 Jan '02

14 Jan '02

Minnie asked: >Can Piri land on Justin and squish him then?? <G> Oh yes - and they can both land on Og's horns :-) Marian

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Re: [B7L] Re: Other SF
by J MacQueen 14 Jan '02

14 Jan '02

>From: "Minnie" <minnie(a)picknowl.com.au> >They did that to you too?? They CH9 did that to us here in Australia too, >and as a result I was taping up a storm and have about 15 episodes to >watch. >Rotten buggers!!!! He's home from New Zealand now, and caught up with Farscape (Sorry to give you the impression that I was anywhere other than Australia, Minnie). He has noted that NZ often gets genre stuff long before Australia (an example being the remake of Randall and Hopkirk, Deceased - he managed to see the first episode, but had to go home before the second. He was a bit disappointed - he wanted to see Tom Baker), but I wonder if that has to do with the impression I've been given that pay-tv is dominant there because free-to-air commercial television viewing is dire*. Not that I'm about to start casting laurel wreaths in the direction of commercial television in Australia, mind you... Regards Joanne *Not only from my brother, but there are the rellies in NZ who've fostered this impression by what they've had to say. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.

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