Sally wrote:

Marian wrote: <By his own admission, Blake goes to free the prisoners because he needs a

crew. I doubt whether he sees them as friends or feels much loyalty to them.>

<grin> Been here, done this. My opinion is still that [a] even at this

stage of memory recovery he could do a hell of a lot better than all of them bar Gan and maybe Vila (as Natasa pointed out some time ago, he doesn't take long to remember the presumed-still-alive rebels on Saurian Major); [b] he has no guarantee that any of them *will* stay and is not going to make them if they don't want to (remember in Time Squad, he makes it clear no one is constrained to stay; [c] he is taking a large risk going down by himself to rescue them, knowing as he does that Avon and Jenna *might* swan off and leave him (he has a fair amount of faith that they won't when push comes to shove, but not blind faith, hence that little lie about what happened on the surface. He could lose everything by doing this, and he knows it.

He needs a crew, yes, but look, we're talking about needing a whole *two

more* people than he's already got to be able to run the ship perfectly well, in a galaxy riddled with dissidents. He doesn't need *these* people.<

As at this stage he can't be sure to find any dissidents wanting to join him, going for the prisoners on Cygnus Alpha seems his best bet. Also, he didn't know that his action would get him only two recruits, nor that a crew of five would be sufficient to run the ship.

I think he feels responsible for them, since his mutiny failed and got

several of them killed. Responsibility is after all one of Fearless Leader's defining traits ... he can manage it for the whole galaxy :-)<

IMO his first priority is to get a crew. That's what he says - we don't hear him talk about going to free his friends or feeling responsible for the survivors of his mutiny. Compare this to his "There's a friend of mine out there!" in The Web. There his concern for Avon is uppermost in his mind. Here his prime concern seems to be to get a crew, not that there are friends out there to be rescued. :-)

Marian