--- Jackie wrote:
I think Travis sees himself as a soldier. In his bionic rebuild (SLD), he refers to his feeling of kinship with mutoids. He'd always give a mutoid priority over a man, he says. This almost suggests he sees mutoids as an improvement over being human. And why shouldn't he? Their superior abilities make them superior soldiers.
They're also disposable. One of the interesting things about Travis is that he has some fugitive stirrings of conscience on occasion. For example his rescue in Gambit and Par's statement that he didn't get his men killed gratuitously. I wonder whether this furtive instinct doesn't make him choose Mutoids. Of course, not being naive like Jarvik, he'd much rather not admit this to Servalan. On this reading, Project Avalon shows his increasing desperation to capture Blake as he sets up unmodified troopers as cannon fodder. By Deliverance he has signed the Faustian bargain and abandoned a debt of honour to the man who saved his life to get at Blake. I think I'm probably retconning Season 2 back into Season 1 to do this btw.
He's turned his missing hand into a weapon. Is he trying to *become* the weapon he's trained to be? (They might have done something with his eye then, made it useful for something, a laser tracking device maybe. I can see a handy red-eyed "Terminator" style modification.)
I think that Travis is a kind of humanoid dalek. He has allowed himself to be dehumanised and turned into a killing machine. It's a fairly old (and incredibly unfair) dramatic convention to show evil people as somehow physically flawed, in order to counterpoint their mental and moral flaws.
Travis probably doesn't think of himself as . . . less than before Blake reconfigured him. Which rather undermines his whole vendetta against Blake.
No good deed goes unpunished <g>
Why should Travis take it personally that Blake maimed him? What did it do to him, to experience that assualt?
I think that it's a professionalism thing. None of us like to fail. What was supposed to be a routine massacre turned into a debacle. (Was Travis supposed to capture Blake or eliminate him ? Perhaps the business with the show trial was an emergency response by the authorities). Besides, if Travis really wanted his arm and eye modified he would probably have a professional surgeon doing the job, not an amateur with the first weapon that came to hand. In Travis' eyes Blake beat him. In SLD he has the chance to return the favour. By Star One he's prepared to take the entire human race down to achieve that end. What's happened in between is that Blake has beaten him again and again and in his attempts to redress the balance he has sacrificed every last shred of human loyalty. What really annoys Travis I imagine is that unlike him Blake doesn't take it personally. "You don't matter enough to kill"
Stephen.
____________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.co.uk address at http://mail.yahoo.co.uk or your free @yahoo.ie address at http://mail.yahoo.ie