Re> Did hurt/comfort in B7 get its origins from American ST fanfic...
Ah, but the Americans learned about drama from the English, years before the invention of the television :).
Shane
It might be argued that h/c has its origins pre-television, too. For example, Bram Stoker did a number of melodramatic stories where a strong heroine rescues and comforts the hero (Dracula itself begins with Johnathan's victimization by vampires, and we appreciate Mina's strength from her ability to comfort Johnathan and her friend Lucy). Jane Eyre certainly could be classified as h/c. I'm sure I've read manly adventure stories where explorers or soldiers have bonded while getting the injured one back to safety, but I can't come up with specific ones at the moment. In the Secret Garden, a platonic friendship forms as Mary helps Colin gain a stronger constitution. There is nothing new under the sun. Don't blame it on the Americans.
It might be argued that h/c has its origins pre-television, too. For example, Bram Stoker
Fair enough, and so did a lot of other nineteenth-century authors. But still, the Victorians weren't the most stable people in the world, were they :)?
Shane
"Alone..." --Cally
How come only Gan ever has a limitor? I know in the book it says it was an experimental device, but surely it would be used 'elsewhere' (from the evidence given it stops the 'wearer' killing someone, but not 'actual bodily harm') __________________________________________________________________ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape Webmail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com/
Jacqui wrote:
How come only Gan ever has a limitor? I know in the book it says it was an
experimental device, but surely it would be used 'elsewhere' (from the evidence given it stops the 'wearer' killing someone, but not 'actual bodily harm')
Hmm, it could be Gan was the first human subject they tried it on, and they decided it wasn't a cost effective way of going about things - perhaps they realized the limiters would have a short working life (it breaks down pretty quickly, doesn't it?) and they'd be better just executing or imprisoning violent prisoners.
Una
Una,
Hmm, it could be Gan was the first human subject they tried it on, and they decided it wasn't a cost effective way of going about things - perhaps they realized the limiters would have a short working life (it breaks down pretty quickly, doesn't it?) and they'd be better just executing or imprisoning
violent
prisoners.
In Trevor Hoyle's novelisation of the first four episodes, _Blake's 7_, Gan explained to Jenna in Chapter 11 that the limiter implant took place before his trial because 'They needed humans for their research, so I was just handed over'. There is an implication there that he was not the only person experimented on.
Regarding your own view that it would have been better just executing Gan, I have a belief that he got a reduced sentence due to the implant, on the grounds that he was at least doing something useful for the cause of science. In 'Breakdown', when Renor expressed his disgust at Gan's limiter implant, Kayn asked if he would have preferred that the latter had been executed.
Murray
--- Murray mjsmith@tcd.ie wrote:
Una,
Hmm, it could be Gan was the first human subject
they tried it on, and they
decided it wasn't a cost effective way of going
about things - perhaps they
realized the limiters would have a short working
life (it breaks down pretty
quickly, doesn't it?) and they'd be better just
executing or imprisoning violent
prisoners.
In Trevor Hoyle's novelisation of the first four episodes, _Blake's 7_, Gan explained to Jenna in Chapter 11 that the limiter implant took place before his trial because 'They needed humans for their research, so I was just handed over'. There is an implication there that he was not the only person experimented on.
I think that Gan would have been an early subject, and that limiters would have been abandoned fairly early on. Implanting and maintaining a limiter involves fairly complex neurosurgery, which doesn't make a lot of sense if the prisoner is just going to be left to rot on Cygnus Alpha. I suspect that the whole op. was just done for research processes - which bit of the brain governs the impulse to kill and can we knock it out without killing the subject ? I think that Gan's fate was an experiment in Neurosurgery, with Gan as a lab rat, not an act of penal reform.
Stephen.
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Stephen Date wrote:
I think that Gan would have been an early subject, and that limiters would have been abandoned fairly early on. Implanting and maintaining a limiter involves fairly complex neurosurgery, which doesn't make a lot of sense if the prisoner is just going to be left to rot on Cygnus Alpha. I suspect that the whole op. was just done for research processes - which bit of the brain governs the impulse to kill and can we knock it out without killing the subject ? I think that Gan's fate was an experiment in Neurosurgery, with Gan as a lab rat, not an act of penal reform.
Trevor Hoyle notwithstanding, I'm not sure I buy the experimental technology explanation. Kayn, who was not a Federation scientist, recognized the limiter, its purpose, and knew how to repair it - that suggests to me it wasn't new or experimental stuff. I'm wondering if its real original intent wasn't to control violent impulses in both directions, perhaps for the purpose of turning homicidal types into obedient Freddy Rationtroopers.
Mistral
--- Mistral mistral@centurytel.net wrote:
Trevor Hoyle notwithstanding, I'm not sure I buy the experimental technology explanation. Kayn, who was not a Federation scientist, recognized the limiter, its purpose, and knew how to repair it - that suggests to me it wasn't new or experimental stuff.
Well Kayn was the best in his field, and the laws of Neurophysics are presumably the same on Earth and XK-47. :)
I'm wondering if its real original intent wasn't to control violent impulses in both directions, perhaps for the purpose of turning homicidal types into obedient Freddy Rationtroopers.
I think the Federation would have been interested in experiments in this direction. My own personal explanation as to why the Mutoid crew promised to Travis in Trial turned into Mutoids is that the Crimmos were merely a nastier version i.e Criminal Psychopaths modified to direct their sadistic tendencies against the Federation's enemies.
Stephen.
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