I'd a feeling for some time that Blake's 7 would become an increasingly inaccurate title. Now that it's true, I feel a bit sick.
At the same time, I'm still in awe of it's glorious nastiness. I wish they wouldn't kill off a dearly beloved major character without warning, unfairly, out of the blue mid-season; and I wish our heroes would have some success, instead of feeling it all turn to ashes for the nth time, but as a serious student of cinema I'm pretty chuffed all the same. Chuffed and, to use a Latin phrase, suffering a sort of "gnawing" grief somewhere in my guts. I'm not sure normal, sane people with a sense of proportion and grasp of the deliniation between "real" and "not real" can understand the inappropriate sorrow that can accompany television tragedies.
Season 2 continues to be sweet and super-ace. I love that it has these layers and multipliciies to it, and that they are genuinely part of the text. In the first season, it was interesting because the crew was so cautious, suspicious and ordinary every time Blake attempted to do something stupidly brave. Yet he was still primarily painted as heroic by the show. Now, the emphasis is shifting. The crew are still objecting, but the show is increasingly agreeing with them and happily criticising its central character - fanatic, bullying, manipulative, ruthless and delusional. And best of all, none of these qualities are new. They've been there from the start, but in small ways. As time's passed, he's finding he can't afford princples, and we are being given more and more stories which show them from a bad light. How marvellous.
The only other show I can think of to come close is Galactica, and it failed by flipfloppering around too much. They'd be a shock reveal for every character in every episode, one ignored by next week. There was not a sense of slow progression. Some worked - Gaius, Gaeta, Starbuck and Laura, I think, were both pretty consistant and fascinating - but others never did. Adama didn't change, Lee was interesting but didn't make sense on the grand scale. Tigh and Ellen were messes, though I loved them all the same. Buma? Walking crisis and psychoanalysts nightmare. In fact, every single cylon didn't really hang together if you look at their acts across the series. I feel that show often used and manipulated characters for maximum effect, not because it was consistant. I suppose recent Doctor Who has gone pretty far in criticising it's hero, but that's only in comparison to what you would expect. And it still hasn't delivered the ton-of-bricks payoff the Doctor deserves for Waters of Mars. DW: Season 21 had a bash, as did Season 28, but never wholly succeeded.
Similarly, it has the courage to challenge the show's entire premise. Our heroes are freedom fighters trying to bring down the Federation - except, do we really want them to? It'd break my other heart if they were captured, but I think their success would be worse. Imagine the chaos, the civil wars that would follow. Regime change is a mess when applied to a single country (remember Russia, or England, or America, or anywhere which isn't currently under a feudal system) - apply it to thousands of planets, and we're talking billions of deaths. They'd be widespread bloody vengeance towards the old rulers and controllers, but in a universe where everyone is complicit, they'd also be snitching and old feuds coming out of the woodwork. The tightly controlled Federation systems would collapse like a card tower and have to be rebuilt from scratch - bam, there goes your infrastructure. If Blake was lucky enough to control all the rebel factions, he'd try and impose democracy. But like Kerensky in Russia, it'd be weak - and in any case, he'd soon start overruling them and making his own decisions (a la Laura in Galactica) as he already does on the supposedly democratic ship. At some point he'd lose control of the army, or be knocked out of power by another rebel faction or his own scheming sidekicks, or at worst, go thoroughly to the bad and become a corrupt Stalin type. And so the cycle would continue.
And then in about fifty years time, there would be peace and democracy. The end.
This is all my own extrapolations. But they are rooted in the characters as presented to us: I wouldn't want thoseseven people six people (must get used to saying six...god, what a nightmare...) to attempt to run a galaxy. It'd be like leaving the Clan in charge. And there are Federation characters who explain what a force for good it is, and you cannot wholly disagree with them.
Incidentally, me and Friend 4 had a go at bringing the Federation down ourselves, and we've a sort of plan based on the years spent studying Russia and Ireland in history. I hesitate to add that this is based on Blake's midset, which is pretty ruthless and crusader-y at present, and requires our heroes to remain uncaught for at least a decade.
We figure that the benefits brought by the Federation outweigh the negatives for most ordinary people, much like Russia for the entire period, or Ireland at the end of the century. In general, public opinion was against revolution - particularly, in Ireland. What would happen is every few years, a straggly band of would-be heroes would have a poorly organised armed revolt in the expectation of mass public support. This would never happen, and ultimately all died in pain. But the British always responded with extreme brutality, which would peversely result in more public support. The Easter Rising is a good example: about 1,000 people tried to take control of Dublin. The British responded by bringing in the big guns, and after about a week of nasty street fighting they were cornered in the post office and taken in. At this point, Dubliner support was actually aligned with the British army for supressing the trouble which disrupted their daily life, destroyed their homes and killed many innocents. However, the army then made some huge mistakes by rushing them through a shoddy and secretive show-trial and swiftly sentencing 90 to death, then executing them by firing squad. Nasty enough, but then stories started leaking out about what had gone on. Patrick Pearse's brother was executed seemingly only for being the brother of the rebel leader; John MacBride hadn't been involved at all, but was bad eggs for other reasons. Most infamously, the already heavily wounded Connelly was tied upright in a chair so he could then be shot. While the latter in particular is purely a matter of sqeamishness (you're gonna shoot him, so does it really matter if he's already dying?), you can see why stories like this would swing opinions. Yet at a trickling rate, it took some 50 years until there were enough ordinary voices to bring about change.
This seems to me very close to the situation with the Federation. At the end of the day, most regular Irish folk cared more about their homes and families than what their rulers were up to. It took a lot of foolish heroes (and two nasty famines) for them to realise the Brits probably weren't the most reliable custodians. The Federation is undeniably brutal, but it has also imposed peace which has allowed technology to flourish and eliminated day to day problems for the 99% willing to live in ignorance. And it is a fairly blissful ignorance - it's not freedom, but who wants freedom if they are warm, happy, fed and safe?
Blake will never be able to rely on widespread popular support. In his position, then, I would be aiming to imitate the situation pre-Russian revolution. I would start by gaining a huge network of underground resistance, and put them into intensive training and preperation but (for now) actively stop causing trouble. I'd institute a rule like Battle of Algiers - if captured, an agent has to resist for a set amount of time to give the others a chance to change the passwords, plans and meeting points. I'd base this length of time on their most powerful truth drug. And do that thing whereby everyone only knows two other people in the organisation, to root out traitors.
In the meanwhile, I'd tempt the Federation into a war with The System - a massively powerful force from an earlier episode. I'd do this by using Orac, the supercomputer, to mimic the effects of attacks on both sides - faking logs and black boxes, making both think the other was attacking them. It'd take time but I think both sides are stupid, proud and violent enough to fall for it. Might have to do some pretty devious and underhand stuff at this point, but all for a good cause.
Hopefully, this would duplicate the effects World War I had on Russia - draining, demoralising and extremely distracting. They would have to pull troops from all over the place. Once they were fully engaged in my fake war, I'd then set all my primed resistance groups off into toppling the outer planets simultaneously. Some would fail, some would succeed - it wouldn't exactly matter. It'd create chaos, and spread Federation forces even further. The atrocities would be catastrophic - in some cases, they'd have no choice but to wipe out whole continents. With so much going on, some of this would doubtless get back to Earth and create discontent.
But in general, people don't care about injustice. If we did, no one would shop at Primark, eat at Macdonalds and we'd all be taking the next plane down to North Korea to effect us some regime change. So about two years before the final attack, I would start interrupting supply ships to Earth on a regular basis. Nothing riles up a population quicker than hunger, as the Russian revolution showed.
Orac - the supercomputer - would have spent maybe the last decade working out exactly where all the Federation command centres are. My minions would use the teleport to go in and out and quickly mine all the important bits of the hierarchy, then blow them up simultaneously. At the same time, others would take control of the crucial bits we would want intact. This is mimicking Trotsky's takeover of Moscow.
At this point, all we'd have to do is wait for the rest to collapse. The people of Earth are fed suppressant drugs by the Federation, so we'd keep them dosed up until they got used to us being in charge. And then we'd take the wicked structures apart AND THE GALAXY WOULD BE FREE. Then see above.
At the same time, I'm still in awe of it's glorious nastiness. I wish they wouldn't kill off a dearly beloved major character without warning, unfairly, out of the blue mid-season; and I wish our heroes would have some success, instead of feeling it all turn to ashes for the nth time, but as a serious student of cinema I'm pretty chuffed all the same. Chuffed and, to use a Latin phrase, suffering a sort of "gnawing" grief somewhere in my guts. I'm not sure normal, sane people with a sense of proportion and grasp of the deliniation between "real" and "not real" can understand the inappropriate sorrow that can accompany television tragedies.
Season 2 continues to be sweet and super-ace. I love that it has these layers and multipliciies to it, and that they are genuinely part of the text. In the first season, it was interesting because the crew was so cautious, suspicious and ordinary every time Blake attempted to do something stupidly brave. Yet he was still primarily painted as heroic by the show. Now, the emphasis is shifting. The crew are still objecting, but the show is increasingly agreeing with them and happily criticising its central character - fanatic, bullying, manipulative, ruthless and delusional. And best of all, none of these qualities are new. They've been there from the start, but in small ways. As time's passed, he's finding he can't afford princples, and we are being given more and more stories which show them from a bad light. How marvellous.
The only other show I can think of to come close is Galactica, and it failed by flipfloppering around too much. They'd be a shock reveal for every character in every episode, one ignored by next week. There was not a sense of slow progression. Some worked - Gaius, Gaeta, Starbuck and Laura, I think, were both pretty consistant and fascinating - but others never did. Adama didn't change, Lee was interesting but didn't make sense on the grand scale. Tigh and Ellen were messes, though I loved them all the same. Buma? Walking crisis and psychoanalysts nightmare. In fact, every single cylon didn't really hang together if you look at their acts across the series. I feel that show often used and manipulated characters for maximum effect, not because it was consistant. I suppose recent Doctor Who has gone pretty far in criticising it's hero, but that's only in comparison to what you would expect. And it still hasn't delivered the ton-of-bricks payoff the Doctor deserves for Waters of Mars. DW: Season 21 had a bash, as did Season 28, but never wholly succeeded.
Similarly, it has the courage to challenge the show's entire premise. Our heroes are freedom fighters trying to bring down the Federation - except, do we really want them to? It'd break my other heart if they were captured, but I think their success would be worse. Imagine the chaos, the civil wars that would follow. Regime change is a mess when applied to a single country (remember Russia, or England, or America, or anywhere which isn't currently under a feudal system) - apply it to thousands of planets, and we're talking billions of deaths. They'd be widespread bloody vengeance towards the old rulers and controllers, but in a universe where everyone is complicit, they'd also be snitching and old feuds coming out of the woodwork. The tightly controlled Federation systems would collapse like a card tower and have to be rebuilt from scratch - bam, there goes your infrastructure. If Blake was lucky enough to control all the rebel factions, he'd try and impose democracy. But like Kerensky in Russia, it'd be weak - and in any case, he'd soon start overruling them and making his own decisions (a la Laura in Galactica) as he already does on the supposedly democratic ship. At some point he'd lose control of the army, or be knocked out of power by another rebel faction or his own scheming sidekicks, or at worst, go thoroughly to the bad and become a corrupt Stalin type. And so the cycle would continue.
And then in about fifty years time, there would be peace and democracy. The end.
This is all my own extrapolations. But they are rooted in the characters as presented to us: I wouldn't want those
Incidentally, me and Friend 4 had a go at bringing the Federation down ourselves, and we've a sort of plan based on the years spent studying Russia and Ireland in history. I hesitate to add that this is based on Blake's midset, which is pretty ruthless and crusader-y at present, and requires our heroes to remain uncaught for at least a decade.
We figure that the benefits brought by the Federation outweigh the negatives for most ordinary people, much like Russia for the entire period, or Ireland at the end of the century. In general, public opinion was against revolution - particularly, in Ireland. What would happen is every few years, a straggly band of would-be heroes would have a poorly organised armed revolt in the expectation of mass public support. This would never happen, and ultimately all died in pain. But the British always responded with extreme brutality, which would peversely result in more public support. The Easter Rising is a good example: about 1,000 people tried to take control of Dublin. The British responded by bringing in the big guns, and after about a week of nasty street fighting they were cornered in the post office and taken in. At this point, Dubliner support was actually aligned with the British army for supressing the trouble which disrupted their daily life, destroyed their homes and killed many innocents. However, the army then made some huge mistakes by rushing them through a shoddy and secretive show-trial and swiftly sentencing 90 to death, then executing them by firing squad. Nasty enough, but then stories started leaking out about what had gone on. Patrick Pearse's brother was executed seemingly only for being the brother of the rebel leader; John MacBride hadn't been involved at all, but was bad eggs for other reasons. Most infamously, the already heavily wounded Connelly was tied upright in a chair so he could then be shot. While the latter in particular is purely a matter of sqeamishness (you're gonna shoot him, so does it really matter if he's already dying?), you can see why stories like this would swing opinions. Yet at a trickling rate, it took some 50 years until there were enough ordinary voices to bring about change.
This seems to me very close to the situation with the Federation. At the end of the day, most regular Irish folk cared more about their homes and families than what their rulers were up to. It took a lot of foolish heroes (and two nasty famines) for them to realise the Brits probably weren't the most reliable custodians. The Federation is undeniably brutal, but it has also imposed peace which has allowed technology to flourish and eliminated day to day problems for the 99% willing to live in ignorance. And it is a fairly blissful ignorance - it's not freedom, but who wants freedom if they are warm, happy, fed and safe?
Blake will never be able to rely on widespread popular support. In his position, then, I would be aiming to imitate the situation pre-Russian revolution. I would start by gaining a huge network of underground resistance, and put them into intensive training and preperation but (for now) actively stop causing trouble. I'd institute a rule like Battle of Algiers - if captured, an agent has to resist for a set amount of time to give the others a chance to change the passwords, plans and meeting points. I'd base this length of time on their most powerful truth drug. And do that thing whereby everyone only knows two other people in the organisation, to root out traitors.
In the meanwhile, I'd tempt the Federation into a war with The System - a massively powerful force from an earlier episode. I'd do this by using Orac, the supercomputer, to mimic the effects of attacks on both sides - faking logs and black boxes, making both think the other was attacking them. It'd take time but I think both sides are stupid, proud and violent enough to fall for it. Might have to do some pretty devious and underhand stuff at this point, but all for a good cause.
Hopefully, this would duplicate the effects World War I had on Russia - draining, demoralising and extremely distracting. They would have to pull troops from all over the place. Once they were fully engaged in my fake war, I'd then set all my primed resistance groups off into toppling the outer planets simultaneously. Some would fail, some would succeed - it wouldn't exactly matter. It'd create chaos, and spread Federation forces even further. The atrocities would be catastrophic - in some cases, they'd have no choice but to wipe out whole continents. With so much going on, some of this would doubtless get back to Earth and create discontent.
But in general, people don't care about injustice. If we did, no one would shop at Primark, eat at Macdonalds and we'd all be taking the next plane down to North Korea to effect us some regime change. So about two years before the final attack, I would start interrupting supply ships to Earth on a regular basis. Nothing riles up a population quicker than hunger, as the Russian revolution showed.
Orac - the supercomputer - would have spent maybe the last decade working out exactly where all the Federation command centres are. My minions would use the teleport to go in and out and quickly mine all the important bits of the hierarchy, then blow them up simultaneously. At the same time, others would take control of the crucial bits we would want intact. This is mimicking Trotsky's takeover of Moscow.
At this point, all we'd have to do is wait for the rest to collapse. The people of Earth are fed suppressant drugs by the Federation, so we'd keep them dosed up until they got used to us being in charge. And then we'd take the wicked structures apart AND THE GALAXY WOULD BE FREE. Then see above.
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