From: blakes7-d-request@lysator.liu.se Subject: blakes7-d Digest V98 #187 X-Loop: blakes7-d@lysator.liu.se X-Mailing-List: archive/volume98/187 Precedence: list MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/digest; boundary="----------------------------" To: blakes7-d@lysator.liu.se Reply-To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se ------------------------------ Content-Type: text/plain blakes7-d Digest Volume 98 : Issue 187 Today's Topics: Re: [B7L] Happy endings Re: [B7L] US spelling Re: [B7L] Drugging to Control Behaviour Re: [B7L] US spelling Re: [B7L] Happy endings Re: [B7L] Happy endings Re: [B7L] Drugging to Control Behaviour [B7L] US spelling Re: [B7L] Drugging to Control Behaviour [B7L] Re US health care (was flag waving) RE: [B7L] Happy endings RE: [B7L] A query or two Re: [B7L] Happy endings [B7L] Re: Happy Endings Re: [B7L] US spelling Re: [B7L] Happy endings Re: [B7L] US spelling Re: [B7L] Happy endings Re: [B7L] Happy endings Re: [B7L] Blake (was Flag waving) RE: [B7L] Happy endings Re: [B7L] Re: Happy Endings Re: [B7L] A query or two [B7L] Re: Drugging to Control Behaviour Re: [B7L] Blake (was Flag waving) Re: [B7L] Re US health care (was flag waving) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 08:18:34 -0500 (CDT) From: Tegan To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: Re: [B7L] Happy endings Message-ID: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 8 Jul 1998 AChevron@aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 98-07-08 04:48:15 EDT, you write: > > << Well we may be in a minority Amanda but I too prefer at > least hopeful endings >> > > I like happy endings myself, but in the B7 world they are often hard to > imagine. There is a certain perverse pleasure in watching Avon et al suffer, > but it's with the expectation that no matter how hard they get hit or knocked > down, they will get back up.(Geez, sounds like a Rocky movie). I prefer realistic endings. There is nothing I hate more than to have an ending where a deus ex machina saves every one from utter despair and they're left all snuggly in their beds. That's why I like Blake's 7. It's a wonderfully refreshing change from the happily ever after junk I see almost everytime I turn around, on tv, in the movies, in books. Ugh. > This thread has me wondering. How many people think that our heroes > "really" died on GP, even if that's not the ending you would have wanted? How > many believe they all lived? That might determine if the "happy ending" folks > are really in the minority. D. Rose Yeah, I think they all died. I think it was supposed to be a season cliffhanger, but I'm pretty sure if there was a 5th season I'd be complaining about what plot device they use to pull in another season. Realism's my friend... tegan (*) tegan@goddess.coe.missouri.edu http://goddess.coe.missouri.edu/~tegan "Well, there's just no delicate way to say this. I want your body." "What! Are you out of your mind?" "Heh, that's a very funny question to ask a telepath,.. since we spend so much of our time in other peoples' minds. I don't want it now, Lyta, just when you are not.. using it anymore, after.. your passing." - Bester and Lyta Alexander, Moments of Transition ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 14:59:10 +0100 From: "Heather Smith" To: Subject: Re: [B7L] US spelling Message-ID: <001e01bdaa78$9597e880$a83463c3@smith99> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Susan wrote: >Excuse me? How would you define the role of the letter Y in these words: > >lymph nymph syzygy > >More to the point, if the Y's aren't the vowels in those words, which >letter is? We were always taught that Y is not a 'proper' vowel, but will do with strange words descended from another language, i.e. Latin, Greek, etc. Out of a matter of interest, what the Hell does 'syzygy' mean? Heather. 'There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish' -The fourth Doctor -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.1 GIT/L/P/O d--? s-():(+) a--- C++(+++)>$ US@ P L E--- W++>+++ N++ !o K w+(---) O@ M- V PS+>$ PE Y+>++ PGP-- t-- 5+ X-(+) R(-)* tv b++++ DI+ D++ G++>+++ e->+++++ h++ r? x- ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 08 Jul 1998 07:24:11 PDT From: "Don Trower" To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: Re: [B7L] Drugging to Control Behaviour Message-ID: <19980708142411.24302.qmail@hotmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain One of my sister's is like this, does coffee mornings, talks about nothing but "child's" school progress. Stepford no question. I see from my TV guide that Lost in Space is due to be shown on Friday PM BBC2 19:00 ish slot. Don. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 09:25:01 -0500 (CDT) From: Tegan To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: Re: [B7L] US spelling Message-ID: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 8 Jul 1998, Heather Smith wrote: > Out of a matter of interest, what the Hell does 'syzygy' mean? According to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary: "the nearly straight-line configuration of three celestial bodies (as in the sun, moon, and earth during a solar or lunar eclipse) in a gravitational system." *breathe* :) tegan (*) tegan@goddess.coe.missouri.edu http://goddess.coe.missouri.edu/~tegan "Well, there's just no delicate way to say this. I want your body." "What! Are you out of your mind?" "Heh, that's a very funny question to ask a telepath,.. since we spend so much of our time in other peoples' minds. I don't want it now, Lyta, just when you are not.. using it anymore, after.. your passing." - Bester and Lyta Alexander, Moments of Transition ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 10:43:11 -0500 From: "Reuben Herfindahl" To: Subject: Re: [B7L] Happy endings Message-ID: <00ab01bdaa87$1cd6ada0$660114ac@misnt> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit -----Original Message----- From: Iain Coleman To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Date: Wednesday, July 08, 1998 10:37 AM Subject: Re: [B7L] Happy endings > > >On Wed, 8 Jul 1998 AChevron@aol.com wrote: > >> This thread has me wondering. How many people think that our heroes >> "really" died on GP, even if that's not the ending you would have wanted? How >> many believe they all lived? That might determine if the "happy ending" folks >> are really in the minority. D. Rose >> I wish I could believe otherwise, but they are all dead. Especially Blake. There was blood. Well, I should amend that Orac is still alive, and presumably taking the place of Star One, all by himself. Boy, that depressed my day. Reuben ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 21:44:35 +1000 From: "Afenech" To: Subject: Re: [B7L] Happy endings Message-Id: <11525067551005@domain2.bigpond.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > > In a message dated 98-07-08 04:48:15 EDT, you write: > > << Well we may be in a minority Amanda but I too prefer at > least hopeful endings >> > This thread has me wondering. How many people think that our heroes > "really" died on GP, even if that's not the ending you would have wanted? How > many believe they all lived? That might determine if the "happy ending" folks > are really in the minority. D. Rose They live. Pat Fenech ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 14:13:16 +0100 From: "Alison Page" To: "Lysator" Subject: Re: [B7L] Drugging to Control Behaviour Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Susan Beth > Frankly, I don't understand why doing an > excellent job at THOSE jobs should get a woman sneered at as a "Stepford > wife" while doing an excellent job at any other job gets respect. Perhaps my post didn't make it clear enough. I'm not criticizing what anybody does with their life. You may not know Susan-Beth but I am a mum with young kids and I do all the things you describe so I'm hardly likely to be sneering at it. I'm pointing out that large numbers of women are drugged all day, every day. Which makes me wonder how happy they really are. I also think it explain some of the affectless-ness which I see about me. It also makes me wonder what would happen to society if the drugs were taken away. The point was to relate current life to life in 'The Federation' where people are drugged to make them fit into lives which would otherwise make them unhappy. The implication being that we are half way there already. And I'm pretty sure that figures are available about the number of women who are on permanent psychoactive medication, and there are really a very large number. However I don't have the stats to hand. I must also make clear (if perhaps it isn't already) that I'm not talking about medication for the x% of people who have some kind of chemical imbalance which would need correcting no matter what their lives were like. Taking whatever pills in this context is of course as sensible as taking insulin if you are diabetic. I assume anyway. Phew.. hope this has made what I saying even more obvious. I thought it was unambiguous to start with. Alison ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 12:40:09 -0400 (EDT) From: Claudia Marie To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: [B7L] US spelling Message-Id: <199807081640.MAA05932@shell1.tiac.net> "amanda" wrote: : all this talk of the forth of July and flag waving got me talking to a : teacher I know I the USA and she informed me that Y is a vowel now I : know its a long time since I was in school but I am sure its still only : AEIOU that are vowels so is this just in the States that they use Y as a : vowel. Not that this has anything to do with Blake's 7 ;-) but it's "a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y". That's because there are times when y is the vowel core of a syllable (like in the word sYllable, or rhYthm, or earlY). Sometimes I've heard, aeiou, sometimes y or w, but as far as I know w only acts as a vowel in Welsh loanwords (cwm is a handy crossword-puzzler's example)--far more rarely than y. "Play"--we don't consider "y" a vowel there. "Fly"--we do consider it a vowel there. Claudia ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 18:11:48 +0100 (BST) From: Iain Coleman To: Lysator Subject: Re: [B7L] Drugging to Control Behaviour Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 8 Jul 1998, Alison Page wrote: > > I'm pointing out that large numbers of women > are drugged all day, every day. Which makes me wonder how happy they > really are. I also think it explain some of the affectless-ness which I see > about me. > > It also makes me wonder what would happen to society if the drugs were > taken away. But which drugs? I certainly couldn't contemplate a working day (or any day) without caffeine, and in the unlikely event of alcohol prohibition in this country, you'll see me on the first plane to Ireland. I'm not disagreeing with what you say, but sometimes we do need to attend to the beams in our own eyes. There are many rather artificial distinctions in our society about how different drugs are perceived. If I took speed to perk me up at work, that would be a serious no-no, and coke would be right out even if I could afford it (unless I changed jobs to one of those flash City firms where it's de rigeur). Similarly, your "Stepford Wives" can acceptably take pharmaceutical tranquilisers, but if they drank instead they might well be regarded less favourably, and I'm sure they'd be ostracised if they admitted to using heroin. Very few people live drug-free lives, and I suspect it has always been thus. Iain ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 08 Jul 1998 18:12:37 +0100 GMT From: STEVE.ROGERSON@MCR1.poptel.org.uk To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: [B7L] Re US health care (was flag waving) Message-Id: <79891532MCR1@MCR1.poptel.org.uk> Taina Nieminen wrote: "And never mind how many health problems people cause for themselves, my understanding of the American system is that if a person is injured in an accident, or something, and they don't have health insurance, hospitals won't treat them. If I'm wrong, please tell me so. I would very much like to be wrong about that." And Susan Beth replied: "It undoubtedly varies from state to state, but I'd be very surprised if that "let them die on the sidewalks" attitude was the rule anywhere." By an amazing coincidence I was a lecture in London today given by a woman from Chicago in which she said, though it does vary from state to state, the number of cases where hospitals refuse to treat people because they have not got insurance is growing. And a lot of insurance is far from comprehensive. She quoted the case of a man in hospital suffering from cancer. His insurance ran out after a year and he was thrown out of the hospital. Not related to health insurance, she also told of the case of a young boy who was shot in the street in Chicago. His friends carried him to the hospital but, because they were young boys, could not get up the ramp to the hospital door. Hospital managers stood just inside the door watching them, but would not help. It was half an hour before an ambulance crew arrived to take him the last 30 metres. He died. cheers Steve Rogerson Redemption 99 - The Blakes 7/Babylon 5 convention 26-28 February 1999, Ashford International Hotel, Kent http://www.smof.com/redemption/ Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 18:14:03 +-200 From: Jacqueline Thijsen To: "blakes7@lysator.liu.se" Subject: RE: [B7L] Happy endings Message-Id: <01BDAA9C.3103E1C0@cmg71700449> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit -----Original Message----- From: Reuben Herfindahl [SMTP:reuben@reuben.net] Sent: Wednesday, July 08, 1998 5:43 PM To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: Re: [B7L] Happy endings -----Original Message----- From: Iain Coleman To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Date: Wednesday, July 08, 1998 10:37 AM Subject: Re: [B7L] Happy endings > > >On Wed, 8 Jul 1998 AChevron@aol.com wrote: > >> This thread has me wondering. How many people think that our heroes >> "really" died on GP, even if that's not the ending you would have wanted? How >> many believe they all lived? That might determine if the "happy ending" folks >> are really in the minority. D. Rose >> > I wish I could believe otherwise, but they are all dead. Especially Blake. There was blood. [Jacqueline Thijsen] I agree about Blake being dead, but mostly because Avon shot him at close range. And let's face it: Avon is always very efficient, no matter how upset he is. As for the rest of them, I just don't know. I would say that if a fifth season had come along, some of them would have turned up wounded in some prison hospital. The rest would have been dead. > Well, I should amend that Orac is still alive, and presumably taking the place of Star One, all by himself. Boy, that depressed my day. Reuben [Jacqueline Thijsen] I was really depressed right after watching "Blake" (about 12 years ago now). I didn't know it was the last episode, so for a while I was waiting for the next one, hoping it would show something like the above scenario, with most of them still alive. And then I became even more depressed when I found out that that episode wasn't made. And now I'm depressed all over again :(. Jacqueline ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 17:47:41 +-200 From: Jacqueline Thijsen To: "blakes7@lysator.liu.se" Subject: RE: [B7L] A query or two Message-Id: <01BDAA98.846B0900@cmg71700449> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On Tue, 7 Jul 1998, Joanne MacQueen wrote: > > This made me wonder. It's more than possible that this has been > discussed before (I may not have been paying due care and attention), > but what sort of constitution do you think the Federation has? If it has > one at all, of course. It could be that the Federation grew out of a > declaration of martial law that was never revoked, a situation that > suited both civil and military authorities. Thoughts, anyone? Iain Coleman answered: I don't think so, for various reasons, but especially the bit at the start of "Trial": Now, if the Federation were under martial law it would be obvious that the military were running the show, and Par wouldn't have to explain it to his colleague. Furthermore, the trappings of civilian constitutional law are clearly still in place, and the Federation citizens still generally believe they work. The Federation appears to hve an independent judiciary, a constitution that allows political disputes to be resolved by peaceful means, a military which is accountable to the civilian authorities and for all we know democratic elections. Doesn't do much good, though, does it? My, what a cheery thought. [Jacqueline Thijsen] I believe so, too. In the episode "The way back", the authorities went to some lengths to make it appear as if Blake had a fair trial, for charges that would be handled by a civilian court even under martial law. If there hadn't been something like a seemingly independent judiciary, they wouldn't have needed to do that. Of course, "The way back" also shows exactly how independent said judiciary system is. > One important distinction between the Federation and our respective legal systems is that we never see a trial by jury. However, Travis's trial is a court martial, and perhaps the right to trial by jury has only been revoked in certain sensitive cases, including child abuse. [Jacqueline Thijsen] It is also possible that the federation came out of a political system that never had trial by jury. We don't have it in Holland and I don't think anyone here misses it. So, no trial by jury doesn't really say anything about the fairness of the trials, as long as the judges are independent. Jacqueline ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 08 Jul 1998 12:52:06 -0700 From: Catharine Roussel To: Lysator B7 list Subject: Re: [B7L] Happy endings Message-ID: <35A3CDE5.53D0@telusplanet.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Pat Fenech wrote: > Amanda wrote: >> is it just me or do people prefer happy endings or do >> people prefer all the ones where every one dies or suffers >> terribly. > > Well we may be in a minority Amanda but I too prefer at > least hopeful endings -smile- I don't want them to suffer > any more terribly than they have and definitely don't want > them dead. I certainly agree that most of the time I don't want to see them dead, although Suzan Lovett's 'Circle of Fire' is an excellent story and one of my favourite exceptions to this statement. In my case, I don't think that it matters so much if the ending is happy, sad or ambiguous. The important thing for me is that by the end of the story there has been a significant development in the characters from where the story started. This can be a development in how the characters perceive themselves, how they perceive the world, how they relate to each other, how they cope with stress or how they deal with their own limitations. The thing that I find objectionable about some happy endings is that in the end, everything is back the way things were before the story began. The characters have been put through the wringer physically and/or emothionally, and yet by the end of the ordeal, nothing has changed. The characters cannot remain unaffected by the terrible situations that they run into in the Blake's 7 universe. They either have to change and adapt or discover that they are incapable of flexibility. Either way, the audience/reader learns something significant about the characters involved. If the events of a story fail to affect the characters, they become like comic book cutout characters (and I think I'm now being uncharitable to comic books)--inhuman and, difficult or impossible to realate to. One of the things that I dearly love about the B7 characters, the thing that has held my attention so long, is that they are very human. They are not perfect people, and in each of them I can see various aspects of myself: the good, the bad and the ugly. Whether the ending is happy or not, the humanity of these characters must be preserved and growth and change are a necessary part of the process. If I really had to choose, I think that I prefer ambiguous endings--happy in the sense that the characters are alive in the end, but they are not unscarred and given the choice, the characters would have wished the outcome to have been different. 'Terminal' is a good example of this type of story. Anyway, that's my 2 cents worth for now. Cheers, Catharine -- Catharine Roussel croussel@telusplanet.net ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 15:09:45 -0400 From: Harriet Monkhouse <101637.2064@compuserve.com> To: "INTERNET:blakes7@lysator.liu.se" Subject: [B7L] Re: Happy Endings Message-ID: <199807081510_MC2-528E-AD46@compuserve.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Amanda wrote: >is it just me or do people prefer happy endings or do >people prefer all the ones where every one dies or suffers >terribly. I sometimes like happy endings that take me by surprise, like, er, (SPOILER!) Catch 22, or the Fortunes of War Trilogy, perhaps. Or endings which are left open for the reader to decide (I love Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49 because the balance of probabilities at the end is so perfect I have no idea which will turn out to be true). In Blake's 7, I like endings where there is a 99 per cent chance of disaster, but one time in a hundred they might get through. Maybe, as I prefer happy endings not to be signalled in advance, it's the build-up to a tragic ending that I enjoy as much as the ending itself. Harriet ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 19:24:57 +0100 (BST) From: Judith Proctor To: Lysator List Subject: Re: [B7L] US spelling Message-ID: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII On Wed 08 Jul, amanda wrote: > back to Blakes 7 I have been of work for the last 3 weeks and it has given me > time to watch some Blakes 7 again, after watching Gambit it remained me why I > loved the Avon/v illa by play the look of little boys caught is just wonderful > at the end,this is proba bly why I love the zines like jabberwocky where > things work out well for our heroes. > is it just me or do people prefer happy endings or do people prefer all the > ones where every one dies or suffers terribly. I tend to love the bleak gloomy ones. But even I like a happy ending at least part of the time. All gloom would be no fun at all. Jabberwocky is a little too happy for my tastes unless I really need picking up, but the main reason I publish it is because I know not everyone has the same taste in stories as myself. There are several happy ending stories among my favourites, especially Mindfire and The Last best Hope. Judith -- http://www.hermit.org/Blakes7 Redemption 99 - The Blakes 7/Babylon 5 convention 26-28 February 1999, Ashford International Hotel, Kent http://www.smof.com/redemption/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 19:31:59 +0100 (BST) From: Judith Proctor To: Lysator List Subject: Re: [B7L] Happy endings Message-ID: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII On Wed 08 Jul, AChevron@aol.com wrote: > I like happy endings myself, but in the B7 world they are often hard to > imagine. There is a certain perverse pleasure in watching Avon et al suffer, > but it's with the expectation that no matter how hard they get hit or knocked > down, they will get back up.(Geez, sounds like a Rocky movie). > This thread has me wondering. How many people think that our heroes > "really" died on GP, even if that's not the ending you would have wanted? How > many believe they all lived? That might determine if the "happy ending" folks > are really in the minority. D. Rose I firmly believe that they all died in the last episode, but I never let that distract me when writing. If I only wrote about what I believed, I'd soon run very short of material. Judith -- http://www.hermit.org/Blakes7 Redemption 99 - The Blakes 7/Babylon 5 convention 26-28 February 1999, Ashford International Hotel, Kent http://www.smof.com/redemption/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 09 Jul 1998 06:37:55 +1000 From: vera@c031.aone.net.au To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: Re: [B7L] US spelling Message-Id: <3.0.1.16.19980709063755.0e8f9828@mail01.mel.aone.net.au> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 12:40 8/07/98 -0400, Claudia Marie wrote: >"Play"--we don't consider "y" a vowel there. >"Fly"--we do consider it a vowel there. A vowel's a sound made with no stoppage or friction of the breath, which is what Claudia just said. If you say "play" you can feel your tongue move up to stop the word (I'm so technical) but you can say "fly" till you run out of breath to say it with. And this is a B7 debate - well, in the same way we could ask: Blake - terrorist or freedom fighter? or Avon - mad as a loon or just having a really bad hair day? Happy endings? Love 'em. But I think they died on Gauda Prime. I'm willing to entertain alternative views, however. Malissa (in a truly frivolous mood this morning) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 22:25:08 +0100 (BST) From: Judith Proctor To: Lysator List Subject: Re: [B7L] Happy endings Message-ID: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII On Wed 08 Jul, Catharine Roussel wrote: > In my case, I don't think that it matters so much if the ending is > happy, sad or ambiguous. The important thing for me is that by the end > of the story there has been a significant development in the characters > from where the story started. This can be a development in how the > characters perceive themselves, how they perceive the world, how they > relate to each other, how they cope with stress or how they deal with > their own limitations. Yes! I think you've hit a major nail on the head there. Perhaps for myself, it isn't so much that I like tragedy as that I like change and growth. I don't like to know in advance how a story is going to end either. Suzan Lovett is wonderful there. You simply do not know how they are going to end. Some happy ending stories signal the ending from the first page. But then some readers prefer it that way. I'm sure we all know at least one person who reads the last page of a book first so that they'll know how it ends before theyread it. I also think it's one of the reasons why the series works so well. The characters changed in response to events. Blake grew more fanatic as he failed to do serious damage to the Federation. Avon changed as he lost Blake, then Cally and had to cope with Anna's betrayal. Vila changed after Orbit. his reaction to Avon was never the same again. Judith -- http://www.hermit.org/Blakes7 Redemption 99 - The Blakes 7/Babylon 5 convention 26-28 February 1999, Ashford International Hotel, Kent http://www.smof.com/redemption/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 18:25:11 -0400 From: DJ Wight To: "INTERNET:blakes7@lysator.liu.se" Subject: Re: [B7L] Happy endings Message-ID: <199807081825_MC2-5293-11C6@compuserve.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit D. Rose wrote, > How many people think that our heroes "really" died > on GP, even if that's not the ending you would have wanted? > How many believe they all lived? That might determine > if the "happy ending" folks are really in the minority. I'd say Blake died---but in the absence of anyone persuading me either that he *couldn't* have survived long enough for a trauma team following the invading troops to get to him, or that no such team could have the technology or sophistication to deal with his injuries, I'm willing to stop short of certainty on it. I'd make good odds on Dayna perishing as well, as the only one of the party shot by Arlen rather than the invading troops. Betting that Blake had any kind of 'no kills' policy, or only issued his recruits with weapons capable of being set for stun would be an incredible stretch. For the rest of the group I'd call it 'really' 50/50, insufficient data. If the troopers had their rifles set to stun (not impossible, if the powers offstage were hot for the idea of pulling in Blake alive) they should all survive---with the possible exception of Avon. In the absence of anyone persuading me *he* couldn't simply absorb too many stun blasts from surviving troopers, not to be killed whether that was intended or not, I'd make him a candidate for the trauma team as well...*did*, actually, in my own PGP fiction. Or they could all have been toast. In short, either denial is wonderful, or it's all a matter of how one cuts one's assumptions. Put me down for the 'want happy endings' group, on the understanding that in the B7 universe, 'happy' = they survive, more often than not. --DJ angnak@compuserve.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 18:25:07 -0400 From: DJ Wight To: "INTERNET:blakes7@lysator.liu.se" Subject: Re: [B7L] Blake (was Flag waving) Message-ID: <199807081825_MC2-5293-11C4@compuserve.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Responding to my wondering about the effects of memory erasure and reprogramming on Blake's perspective, Judith writes, > It could have made a lot of difference. Before the mind-wipe > I assume that Blake was motivated solely by abstract idealism. I also tend to do this, without being able to say quite why. > He saw a world in which people were drugged, programmed > into mutoids, indoctrinated, 're-educated' and given no > control over their own lives. I see him as one of the better off > people, those who probably had some freedom and autonomy > over their lives. It seems to make sense that jobs that needed > the capability of original thought would be done by people > who were not subject to the drugs. >As one of the better-off, I see Blake's motives as altruistic. >He had more to lose, and in fact, he did lose it. As Vila says: "Look, he was an Alpha grade on Earth. A highly privileged group, the Alphas." I think this *is* largely where my sense of his original commitment to resistance as more likely to have been philosophically motivated, grounded in altruism and an intellectual understanding of political ideals, rather than a matter of immediate, gut-level outrage, comes from. It’s either that or his awareness of history, driving the impression. What I find hardest, when it comes to getting any good sense of Blake's character beyond the narrowest interpretation of the moment is, for me, the impossibility of opening any question about who he is and was, without immediately opening an infinite set of questions about the society and personal experience which created him...most of which seem mostly unanswerable. Things like just how explicitly repressive the Federation was. To what extent did it rely on naked oppression as opposed to more subtle promotions of apathy? How successfully did it justify its explicit restrictions in terms of the entire society being on a war or post-war survival footing? Its apparent militarization---how evident was that to most citizens? What illusions of freedom and democracy were fostered? I find it so interesting, in The Way Back , how intent Ven Glynd and company are on having all appear to be above-board in their handling of Blake’s case. Their concerns are framed in terms of a dissatisfied population and growing numbers of dissidents. Evidently control is not entirely---perhaps not even primarily---a matter of brute force, here. I immediately wonder if the regime has preserved some illusion of a more or less free news media, or, thinking of its sponsorship of the Terra Nostra as legitimized crime, perhaps tame activists. Perhaps that's what Foster meant about there being many activist groups, and Blake's the only one that really meant anything. So how much of the worst of Federation abuses were common or even uncommon knowledge? How much of it did Blake know? What knowledge, what personal or witnessed experiences, moved him from being whoever he was to begin with, to leading a resistance group in the first place? > After the mindwipe, he had many motivations. again to condense> They'd tampered with his mind >(remember that there were still remnants of that Federation >conditioning at the end of the second season) and taken his >memory of who and what he was. Exactly! For me this adds the nightmare of sorting out how far his memory might still have been blocked at any point, and how he might have been experiencing that. It raises questions of the extent to which his persona ended up being a patchwork of real and implanted memories, and whether or not he ever recovered enough of his true self, or achieved a coherent enough patchwork, to feel he was 'all there'. Given the comfortable, pulled- together strength of the character we see, it would be easy to say 'oh, no problem, sure he did!' and I won't say I really believe he didn't...but the longer I look at it, the bigger an open question it seems. I can't help thinking (leaving aside all the real-world reasons why the character couldn't be either crazier or a more focused and effective rebel than he was) it might be as sound a reading to say that he only functioned as well as he did---only presented as unbalanced/possessed/berserk/mad, when he could feel he was approaching the immediate power to take down the Federation with one last strike---because the circumstances in which he found himself were relatively safe and simple. From the security of the fastest and most powerful ship in the galaxy, with only a small group of conveniently fractious (distracting) people to contain, can we fairly call the challenges he had to face---had to, rather than being able to choose or refuse them---anything like as overwhelming as those he'd have faced if he were still trying to organize a mass rebellion on the ground anywhere? One could argue his seeming lack of focus and strategic thinking as giving away the failure of the situation to challenge him either into a more effective recovery, or---for me, more likely---complete disintegration. But then I wonder if the doubts he expresses in "Blake" aren't partly signs of his persona disintegrating. Perhaps of other, darker experiences opening up other aspects of his past and revealing him to himself as other than he and we have believed. >Yet even before he fully regained his memory, the urge to >fight back was there. It was fuelled by the sight of the >massacre of the rebels in the underground tunnels and by the >fact that his trial was a sham. Hitting out at injustice was >almost hard-wired into Blake. Useful, IMO, in that it allows us to be reasonably certain of that being part of him as he 'really' was. Establishes a strong, innately decent base line. >So, a mixture of motivations. I think he was driven harder >afterwards because of the personal element. It drove him to >become more fanatic. Remember his comment when he burst >into Central Control. 'I've done it!' At that moment it >was a personal vendetta. It's that personal element I find most convincing, the man acting out of a blazing personal need to strike back at his oppressor. Could be because I somehow see that as lessening his real effectiveness as a revolutionary, that I tend to assume it was less of a factor the first time around. >yet there were many times when he was capable of seeing he >larger picture. At Star One he was able to set aside his >personal hatred of the Federation because he recognised that >the Andromedans presented a threat to all humanity. I loathe the Andromedans as a mythic absurdity, but Blake's deducing their presence and reacting as he does is one of his finer moments. >Many people initially see Avon as the more complex character >because he's dark and broody, but Blake's motivations and >feelings are complex, not least because of the mixture of >personal and idealistic motivation. Avon's easier to deal with, but by no means more complex. *Lord, no....* I find it's easier to follow what's happening with him, he has the advantage of starting as such a closed character, motives so narrowly defined and so much to suggest him a relatively immature and unsophisticated creature, that there's only one direction his story can run---towards his growing up and suffering the consequences. That and the fact that to the extent he's a mess, he appears to be his own mess the way most of us are. One simply doesn't have to deal with his having had the extraordinary help Blake's had. Or to put it another way, imagining him whole and complete, I get the image of (at best or worst, I'm not sure which ) an 18 to 20 year old kid, an off the scale introverted nerd of dubious upbringing. Imagining Blake the same way, I get a tough, humane, mature, well adjusted, well educated and highly intelligent 30 year old, a force to be reckoned with on all levels. Not as noisy or obvious, and one doesn't need an advanced course in porcupine-cuddling to survive him, but a whole different *order* of complexity. > PS. Blake's complexity is perhaps best demonstrated by the > fact that many fan writers take him to one extreme or the > other. He is portrayed as a saint who could not hurt a fly, or > an extremeist who dices with the lives of his followers with > no care for them at all. Works for me. *sigh* shutting up now, folks, forgive ramble --DJ angnak@compserve.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 17:52:33 -0500 (CDT) From: Ray Kaplan To: Blakes7 List Subject: RE: [B7L] Happy endings Message-ID: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 8 Jul 1998, Jacqueline Thijsen wrote: >>> This thread has me wondering. How many people think that our heroes >>> "really" died on GP, even if that's not the ending you would have wanted? >How >>> many believe they all lived? That might determine if the "happy ending" >folks >>> are really in the minority. D. Rose >>> >> I wish I could believe otherwise, but they are all dead. Especially Blake. >There was blood. > >[Jacqueline Thijsen] I agree about Blake being dead, but mostly because Avon >shot him at close range. And let's face it: Avon is always very >efficient, no matter how upset he is. >As for the rest of them, I just don't know. I would say that if a fifth season >had come along, some of them would have turned up wounded in some prison >hospital. The rest would have been dead. > >> Well, I should amend that Orac is still alive, and presumably taking the >place of Star One, all by himself. > >Boy, that depressed my day. > >Reuben > >[Jacqueline Thijsen] I was really depressed right after watching "Blake" >(about 12 years ago now). I didn't know it was the last episode, so for a >while I was waiting for the next one, hoping it would show something like >the above scenario, with most of them still alive. And then I became even >more depressed when I found out that that episode wasn't made. I remember reading somewhere that Blake wasn't meant to be the last episode, and there was going to be a fifth season, so it isn't unreasonable to assume that at least some of them made it. I remember that it was going to start out with Avon, then Vila would appear or something like that. Here is who I think is alive and dead. It has been a while since I have seen the last episode. Blake: Dead. Avon shot him at close range, so I don't see how he can be alive. Avon: Alive. We don't see him killed. Also, he was meant to be in the fifth season. Jenna: Alive. We don't see her get killed either. I don't know if I really buy what Blake says about Jenna in the last episode. Cally: Dead. She died at Terminal. Vila: Alive. I remember reading about how he fell the wrong way, and of course he was meant to be in the fifth season. Dayna: Not sure, but probably dead. We see her get shot. Tarrant: Dead. He was in bad shape already, so I doubt he could have survived. Soolin: Not Sure, but probably dead. We see her get shot as well. Orac: Alive. Orac could be talking the place of Star One, but unless it wanted to I would think that Orac could devise a way to escape from Gauda Prime and the Federation before anyone found it. Of course all of this assumes that something doesn't happen such as a cloning effort of some kind, or the Gauda Prime incident being a set up by Avon and Blake, or Orac, or someone else, or something else plausible happening. _______________________________________________________________ Ray Kaplan CS Major University of Illinois rckaplan@acm.org Chair of SigVR at ACM@UIUC http://www.ews.uiuc.edu/~rckaplan O- _______________________________________________________________ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 19:03:59 EDT From: ShilLance@aol.com To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: Re: [B7L] Re: Happy Endings Message-ID: <1545b3a4.35a3fae0@aol.com> Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Any Forever Knight fans out there........? What do you think about the ending to that series? Gwynn ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 15:04:02 +0100 From: "Dangermouse" To: , Subject: Re: [B7L] A query or two Message-Id: <199807081435.PAA29597@gnasher.sol.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ---------- > From: AChevron@aol.com > To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se > Subject: Re: [B7L] A query or two > Date: 08 July 1998 02:29 > > My own feeling about the Federation is that there is probably some > constitution, but one that is similar to that of my home state, Virginia, Hey, you should come along to Rising Star - I'll be there... ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 18:45:31 +0100 From: "Susan Bennett" To: Subject: [B7L] Re: Drugging to Control Behaviour Message-Id: <199807081739.SAA09368@mail.iol.ie> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Alison Page said: >>>Also noticeable - they don't take much notice of their kids, although that is ostensibly why they don't work.<<< Alison - I've had the pleasure of meeting you in person so I know that you realise what work is involved in raising children, but I still feel compelled to take issue with your terminology. If one more person tells me that mothers who stay in the home to raise their children don't *work* then I will explode! We are not waged, but we do work. I know I'm being picky here, but it's a distinction that I feel matters a lot to people like me who do this job. Susan Bennett ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 15:02:40 +0100 From: "Dangermouse" To: "Susan Clerc" , "Blake's 7 list" Subject: Re: [B7L] Blake (was Flag waving) Message-Id: <199807081435.PAA29584@gnasher.sol.co.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ---------- > From: Susan Clerc > > So, was the Resistance lying? Were they desperate enough to fabricate the > > story in order to get back their figurehead? The alternative explanation is > > that Blake's family met with an accidental death, or were later executed for > > "crimes" committed after transport. Any comments? D. Rose > > 2. His family was killed and Blake knew it before the mindwipe, that's why > the Federation gave him the forged tapes to suppress the memory. Being off > the drugged food and water, meeting Foster again, and seeing the massacre > overcame the conditioning and he remembered everything the Federation had > tried to make him forget. I find it unlikely that they were transported to a colony then killed. The Federation is efficient enough at making people disappear on Earth, so why go to all the trouble of moving them somewhere else just to kill them? It's likely then, that both the Federation and Foster lied (or were in error) about what really happened to them... ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Jul 1998 14:51:50 EDT From: AChevron@aol.com To: Blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: Re: [B7L] Re US health care (was flag waving) Message-ID: <53a03d36.35a3bfc7@aol.com> Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-07-08 13:14:26 EDT, you write: << Not related to health insurance, she also told of the case of a young boy who was shot in the street in Chicago. His friends carried him to the hospital but, because they were young boys, could not get up the ramp to the hospital door. Hospital managers stood just inside the door watching them, but would not help. It was half an hour before an ambulance crew arrived to take him the last 30 metres. He died. >> Morally this case is reprehensible. However, the hospitals in the US live in abject fear of legal provisions known as Cobra. These regulations would cost a hospital its liscense and very steep fines if broken, and help ensure care is rendered. Of more concern is hospitals dumping patients on other facilities after stabalizing them. This is a problem Cobra helps with, but does not competely prevent. As a pre-hospital provider, and someone who has had a parent go through both the "regular" health care system, and the Veteran's Administration's system, I am very leary of government run health care ala the V.A. It is slower, more ineeficient, and oft-times more dangerous than the regular system. I don't know what the "perfect" solution is; but I doubt if it is state-run medicene. to me, the best solution is to allow states to experiment on their own, thus limitting damage if a system doesn't work, while providing a model for others if it does. Ditto the education system. D. Rose -------------------------------- End of blakes7-d Digest V98 Issue #187 **************************************