Pat wrote:

So there aren't a lot of people of color in the universe during the New Calendar. This seems to be somewhat more reflective of modern British society's numbers of nonwhites overall which I think (please someone correct me here) is lower than in the States.

Current figures from ONS (Office of National Statistics) put the nonwhite population of the UK at 6.4%. This percentage varies vastly between regions.

In a message dated 3/3/01 12:21:41 PM Eastern Standard Time, tavia@btinternet.com writes in response to my comment about Boucher and Nation copping out in loading the dice against Blake in season two:

<< I'm not convinced that the makers of B7 had much of a choice here: the extent of terrorist action against the UK government probably made any other course of action impossible. It's easy perhaps to underestimate the effect that terrorist action has had on ordinary UK citizens over the past decades (e.g., Kathryn's 'where are the waste bins' question), e.g., commuting to London (early 90s) I recall approximately 1--2 bombs/bomb scares per week closing either chunks of the Underground or the major London stations....

In a society where large numbers of people have been affected directly or indirectly by terrorist action, valorizing terrorist actions on public-subsidised television would simply be impossible.

...

...

I agree with what you say here to some extent. And I think you are right to point out that my "blaming" of Boucher and Nation for copping out by not to continue to valorize Blake is really due to factors more widespread than just the individual beliefs or fears of two people. Really, your comment about the bomb scares in the London Underground shows the extent to which such fear was widespread, legitimate and that Boucher and Nation were really at some level playing with fire in the whole premise of the show itself.

Still, it's the impossibility that you mention here that strikes me. I wonder what it would be like were it indeed possible for Boucher and Nation to have continue to valorize Blake at the same time that real political groups were using similar tactics against the British State. Were it possible to do this, would B7 have possibly opened up a space of debate about the nature of "terrorism" that it is now virtually impossible to locate let alone discuss?

I'm not quite sure what this space would look like but it seems that in valorizing Blake's actions as a "freedom fighter" I guess Boucher and Nation run the risk of possibly having their audience see the tactics of say the IRA as legitimate political actions, no less legitimate than Blake's.

Two things: First, I'm wondering first if that could have really happened -- I mean, I think I'm assuming too quickly a transfer from the level of fiction to the level of reality. And quite frankly, I honestly don't think people are all that consistent in their beliefs, so what looks right in a fictional universe we may still affirm as wrong in the "real" world.

Only speaking from personal experience, but the connection between Blake's cause and the IRA was explicit in my mind as an eight-year old sitting down to watch B7 in 1980. This is probably substantially linked to having been brought up in an environment which was very strongly Irish Republican. It's certainly why I became so engrossed in the show.

My previous post about this notwithstanding, I've been thinking about this the past few days and wondering the extent to which this would have been the case more generally across Britain. As far as I can recall, IRA activity only reached the mainland during the early to mid 1980s, after the hunger strikes (and after B7 was cancelled). Given that I'm trying to think back to when I was ten, there may be some people out there who might remember differently, and I'd be very interested to hear what they can remember, and whether they made an explicit connection between B7 and the situation in Ireland. (And how B7 would have been watched in Belfast in 1978-79 is, of course, another matter entirely.)

I do think the construction of the Federation as an overtly fascist regime is of key importance here (I really think it's essential to remember the extent to which Nation repeatedly returned to his childhood fears of Nazism when he was writing for Who and B7). Another extremely popular BBC show in the mid 70s was 'Secret Army', which was about the Belgian resistance during WW2. I'm wondering if B7 was generally viewed as having more affinity with that type of resistance. But I cannot believe that the connection with the IRA did not occur to Boucher, at least (anyone read anything about this in an interview?).

It's not till the mid / late 1980s (when IRA activity on the mainland has started to make itself felt) that I can recall the debate about how terrorism should be handled on television. I remember that an episode of ST:TNG ('The High Ground', I think) was pulled by the BBC round about 1988 (?). There was also a tremendous furore over a documentary about the shootings in Gibraltar; I can't put a date to this and would be grateful if someone could jog my memory. (As a coda, BBC 1 have just finished transmitting a prime-time drama about the Easter Rising which was Republican in its sympathies.)

To sum up: the second season of B7 (in which the ambiguity of the premise is being dealt with) was transmitted in early 1979. I'm unsure of the extent to which IRA activity had reached mainland Britain at that time, and the extent to which the connection would have generally been made (I definitely made it, but then... well, that's my background). I'd be interested to hear what people can add to this.

This suggests to me: 1. they weren't necessarily thinking about the IRA (and I think Nation was constructing the show primarily in terms of his usual preoccupations with Nazi-like fascist regimes - although I'd be frankly amazed if Boucher hadn't thought of it); 2. you could get away with doing a show like this in the late 70s that you simply wouldn't be able to get away with two or three years later.

Also, it's BBC sci-fi. People can dismiss it more easily - as being a kid's show. Every other Who story in the 70s is about freedom fighting. But surely we aren't taking it seriously...? <g>

(Wow! I really did post something serious on Lysator.....Hijackers Welcome!)

Yippee! Hope we can keep you here!

Una

From: Sestina94@aol.com Aha, a Real Subject...

So what you have then is an attempt to chart a world of fantasy but one's imagination it seems is not totally limitless, but is in fact limited to the mundane reality of the world you have actually experienced.

Absolutely true, and I think SF works best when used as a distorting mirror held up against the times in which it is crafted. SF is essentially didactic. It's hardly surprising that the writers - the root source of B7 - should turn first and foremost to their own country for a framework in which to set their scripts. In B7's case it's pretty clear - post-colonial guilt, post-imperial nostalgia, and a crisis of confidence engendered by an awareness of the loss of global influence.

The real world of 20th century Britain further shapes the show in the surprising lack of cultural diversity in the actors as well -- It seems

the

only people of color I remember seeing in the show other than Dayna and

Hal

"My name is Superfly" Mellanby, are some Black guys in the fourth season

ep

"Warlord"

Also some spear carriers in Vice From the Past. Ginka (Children of Auron) is AFAIK the only character of Asian descent. (Horizon is culturally ambiguous - I always took it to be modelled on ancient South American civilisations. Deep Roy may be an Indian actor, but he never played an explicitly Indian character.)

and man, I think the person who costumed the Space Rats, outfitted these dudes as well. Which means that they seemed to be someone's imagination of "far-outness" that was limited really to the costumers real life understanding (or misunderstanding) of punk or alternative youth culture.

Nicky Rocker should never, IMO, have been let anywhere near B7.

Finally, where I see the real world 20th century Britishness intruding in

B7

occurs I think in the very changing depiction of Roj Blake not as a

valorized

and sympathetic "freedom fighter" as was strongly marked at the beginning

of

the show, but more and more as a kind of fanatical "terrorist" especially

in

series 2 where he seems to be a bit more drawn more like an anarchist of

some

sort.

Blake never really has any kind of 'ism' attached to him at all. This is partly understandable in that identifying him with a particular real world doctrine might squick some viewers, or at least compromise the series' claim to be lightweight entertainment. It's a good thing because it permits plenty of personal readings of Blake, but a bad thing because it weakens the credibility of his aims by failing to locate them in a broader ideological perspective.

But I have always got the feeling that Boucher, Nation and company (though perhaps I need to distinguish them better than I'm doing) seemed a trifle bit uneasy with a show valorizing a figure whose only

means

of fighting politically is to destroy key aspects of the state apparatus,

in

a culture that is so marked by such real world "terrorism". I mean, does anyone else get the sense that real life British society's situation with

say

the IRA and other groups fighting the British State posed a problem for Boucher and Nation in terms of how to handle Blake's character?

I don't see any sign of unease at all, and I wouldn't expect it to be a problem for Terry Nation who had little trouble labelling the good guys as good and the bad guys as bad (though some of his Survivors scripts showed the levels of ambiguity he was capable of when he tried). It would seem to be Chris Boucher and Robert Holmes who were more interested in greying the polarities, usually by putting one-off characters between the extremes (eg Bellfriar and Gambril in Countdown, Grenlee and Forres in Rumours). I don't see any great problem with presenting Blake as a terrorist (a word which IIRC is never used in the entire series) because no explicit connection is forged between the series and the situation in Ulster. (Although as Una pointed out, it is possible for viewers to make one for themselves. In fact, I'm surprised at the number of people engaged in RL revolutionary struggles have responded so positively to a series that largely failed, IMO, to take its central subject matter seriously enough.)

Really, I've always felt that they took the easy way out by marking Blake

so

strongly as a fanatic by the time Pressure Point and Star One rolls

around,

Then, B7 as a popular show on the BBC, couldn't possibly be considered "political" in the sense of condoning so-called "terrorist" actions

against

the British State. In raising the gray area of Blake's commitment and fanaticism, I think Nation and Boucher were trying very hard to make

viewers

NOT read the Terran Federation as a metaphor of 20th Century British

Society

I disagree with this. Whilst there is a recognisably British mindset to the Federation, the Federation as a government is not a reflection of the British government (under Callaghan for the first three seasons, Thatcher for the 4th). In fact Callaghan's muddled government and its alliance with the Liberals is quite unlike the unified monobloc of Federation rule. Nor can I see anything substantially Thatcheresque in Servalan (though I can't recall when Thatcher came to lead the Conservative party - was it before or after B7 began its run?). The Ulster situation is hardly paralleled either, since we do not have the Federation (as the British government) collaborating with another galactic power bloc (the Irish government) to suppress a dissident voice (Blake) outlawed by both. If there are parallels between Blake and any RL faction, it would be an ideologically motivated one such as the RAF or Red Brigade, not a parochially motivated one such as the IRA or PLO. Nor need Blake be considered as an analogy of a left wing revolutionary movement - he could be the OAS against the Federation's De Gaulle.

-- for to do so would implicitly condone and legitimate the actions of

those

so-called "terroristic" groups who were in armed struggle against it.

Hence,

I think we get a pronounced marking of Blake's ego investment in the cause

in

the ep "Pressure Point" where he says "we did it; I did it" (So much for collectivity here) as well as his similar remark to Cally in "Star One"

where

he says that not to blow up Star One would then mean that everything he's done was just meaningless acts of terrorism. (Again, I think he speaks in terms of I and not we)

It is in fact 'we'. I think Chris Boucher's concern here is that revolutionaries do develop an ego investment in their campaigns, or at least can do so. This is perhaps almost inevitable when the individual identifies her/imself so closely with the chosen cause, as is necessary to turn revolutionary comitment into action. I don't think the problem of legitimation is an issue here.

It pays to be careful when second-guessing a writer's intentions. My take on Star One, Blake choosing to side with the Federation against the Andromedans, was that it might have been a critical comment on the Peace Movement's calls for unilateral disarmament. I finally got to collar Chris Boucher over this at Deliverance 98, and his reply was to the effect that this was very unlikely since he was pretty much in the CND camp at that time. This doesn't rule out the possibility that he might have harboured doubts about the unilateralist position that subconsciously worked their way into the script. (I should point out that this is pure speculation based on a 3-year old recollection, and I'm not trying to nail CB's political colours to any mast. For one thing, it was pretty loud in that bar and my hearing's not good at the best of times.)

Let me say that I think there's a lot of play in how people read and extrapolate from fiction to reality such that while I see Boucher and

Nation

loading the dice to make Blake less of a valorized character by making him look like more of a "terrorist," (always a negative term), I think many people (myself included) find enough internal evidence in the show to read against this loading of the dice.

I'm not convinced that any dice were being loaded either way. What we have is a valourised stereotype of a white hat hero given greater complexity and ambiguity (and hence plausibility). Whilst this might provoke some people to ask "Is Blake a terrorist?", that question is not asked within the series itself. Blake does not at any time comit a purely terrorist act (ie; the deployment of terror against the civilian populace to weaken the credibility of the ruling government). There is nothing analogous to the street bombings of the IRA, the PLO and its car bombs and airline hijacks, the hostage taking of the Munich Olympics or the seizure of OPEC ministers. The closest realworld analogy to Star One would be the IRA's 1984 Brighton hotel bombing, which would not have brought down the British government (as an institution) any more than assassinating Servalan (or the President) would have toppled the Federation. Terrorism can only achieve victory by enforcing recourse to negotiation (as has happened with Northern Ireland and Palestine) or inspiring a popular uprising (as the Tupamaros failed to do in Venezuela). Its direct impact is inevitably limited unless perhaps its aims are very narrowly focussed (the British Animal Rights movement had measurable success in restricting the sale of furs through a protracted campaign of vandalism and arson, but the fur trade itself continued [unfortunately]).

Basically, we cannot say that the dice were loaded against the risk of portraying Blake as a terrorist because Blake never really acted as a terrorist. Not that this stops some people claiming that he was one.

My point here is that even with sci-fi, one can never indulge in pure fantasy as that fantasy always bears some relation to the real world context in which it was conceived,

Perhaps the most glaringly obvious transfer of RL events to a B7 episode is in Trial. A certain Lt William L Calley springs to mind.

Neil