From: blakes7-d-request@lysator.liu.se Subject: blakes7-d Digest V00 #72 X-Loop: blakes7-d@lysator.liu.se X-Mailing-List: archive/volume00/72 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 00 : Issue 72 Today's Topics: Re: [B7L] Companions on the Liberator (was First Impressions: "Time Squad") [B7L] Re: Beautiful Suffering Re: [B7L] Greetings (fwd) Re: [B7L] Re: Episode Reviews Re: [B7L] Companions on the Liberator (was First Impressions: "Time Squad") Re: [B7L] Re: Episode Reviews Re: [B7L] Greetings Re: [B7L] First Impressions: "Time Squad" Re: [B7L] Companions on the Liberator (was First Impressions: "Time Squad") Re: [B7L] Episode Reviews Re: (fwd) Re: [B7L] Re: Episode Reviews Re: [B7L] Companions on the Liberator (was First Impressions: "Time Squad") Re: [B7L] Companions on the Liberator Re: [B7L] Companions on the Liberator (was First Impressions: "Time Squad") [B7L] Travii and Gan Pictures! [B7L] sexing the box (was Episode Reviews) Re: [B7L] Companions on the Liberator Re: [B7L] Companions on the Liberator ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 13:42:34 GMT From: "Mat Shayde" To: Blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: Re: [B7L] Companions on the Liberator (was First Impressions: "Time Squad") Message-ID: <20000316134234.86008.qmail@hotmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Hi Guys, I'm new to the Lysator lists, so I don't know if I'm doing this right, but I'm sure that someone will tell me if I'm not! :) Just got this posting and felt compelled to reply. I agree with Murray about Sarah. She'd be ok, Jo would be a disaster though. As for the idea that Leela 'might stand a chance' - huh! She could fight Dayna to a standstill with one hand tied behind her back. She's a highly trained savage warrior, not a spoilt girl playing with guns. :) Think of the fun that Dayna and Ace could have blowing things up together - gaudy and effective! Romana would also certainly survive, she could match Avon insult for insult and she would have useful technical knowledge. (I'm running the Blake's 7 role-playing game at the moment and I am planning for my group to meet Romana at some point soon!) K-9 and Orac could try to out-smug each other. (or if one was feeling uncharitable out-camp each other!) As for Harry, I don't know what stopped The Doctor from throwing him out into space never mind Avon! Nice to join you, Neil From: Murray Smith To: Lysator Subject: [B7L] Companions on the Liberator (was First Impressions: "Time Squad") Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 13:20:26 +0000 Nina said: Very true. But would any of the Doctor's companions have made it on Liberator or Scorpio? Ace or Leela might have had a chance - frequently pugnacious and they don't scream *very* much. The only thing that might keep Avon from pushing Harry out an airlock would be his medical skills, and he might tolerate Romana for her advanced knowledge, but I think the rest of 'em would pretty much be toast. OTOH, Blake and co. don't run into alien monsters as much as the Doctor does, so maybe the companions wouldn't scream so much. Don't forget Sarah-Jane Smith. She was pugnacious as well. Now if it was Jo Grant, I'd agree with you completely, as I wouldn't even trust her to operate the teleport. Murray ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 11:53:22 -0500 From: "Dana Shilling" To: "Lysator List" Subject: [B7L] Re: Beautiful Suffering Message-ID: <007901bf8f68$305aefe0$7ef0590c@dshilling> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In popular entertainment, violence is always a more respectable subject than sex, and conditioning leads to a certain amount of sexualization of violence. If you're a Renaissance cardinal with a palazzo full of paintings of half-dressed good-looking young men, people will call you pagan or worse. Fill the place with paintings of half-dressed good-looking young men dying horribly, you're devout. Sooner or later, you'll start to think of arrows as accessories (and react to an attractive fellow by thinking "Gee, I'd sure like to stick an....arrow into him.") In a war movie, it's OK to cradle your dying comrade in your arms, but not one with an indefinite life expectancy and a grin on his face. Imagine two hypothetical B7 scripts, both centering around the archetypal charged situation. In both, Blake gets tired of doing the same thing over and over again and decides to cut to the car chase. Alternative #1: backhands Avon across the mouth Alternative #2: tonsil hockey. Reasonable minds (oh, wait! list members) could disagree about the canonical authority, plausibility, effect on Blake's life expectancy, or arousal value of the two scenarios. But in the 1978-1981 time period, the BBC would consider Alternative #1 an acceptable script and Alternative #2 an entirely unacceptable one. Anyway, fandom (and especially fanfic) includes many (or many, many) women. Often, women feel that the men they are involved with don't understand/appreciate/communicate with them. It's more enjoyable to imagine that your mate is unable to express his volcanic emotions because of his Secret Sorrows than that he's forgotten you're alive because it's football/baseball/World Cup/Federation destroying season. Generally, Blake annoys the people close to him inadvertently, through sublime lack of consonance between his vision and actual events. Avon deliberately winds people up after intensive attention to what would REALLY get to them. Many people prefer the attention. -(Y) ----- Original Message ----- From: Judith Proctor To: Lysator List Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2000 10:26 AM Subject: Re: [B7L] The nature of web sites (was episode reviews) > On Tue 14 Mar, Andrew Ellis wrote: > > > > I'm unlike Niel in that I have not been on line for 10 years. > > I laughed out loud at this bit! > > Neil, have you been on line a year yet? I don't think it's even that long. > > > I'm learning the rules as we go along. partly because thats the best way, and > > partly because people don't always help. For example I once asked if somebody > > could explain what all the TLA's mean. First reply - not on this list go away > > (it might not have been Lysator - people here are usually only that rude when > > favourite characters are slighted !). Next time I try, I ask if a URL exists > > where I could go and see. This time silence (from this list). OK no problem, > > but be patient whilst I learn. > > speaking as a psychology student - the larger a group is percieved to be, the > less likely any individual is to offer help. Basically, they all assume that > someone else will do it. The bigger the group, the more people there are who > may do it. > > There's also 'compassion fatigue'. I used to post unsub instructions every time > someone tried to do it the wrong way. Eventually, I got tired of doing it over > and over again. I just leave the instructions on the web site and hope that > people will have the sense to look for leaving instructions in the same place > they found joining instructions. > > Judith > -- > http://www.hermit.org/Blakes7 - Fanzines for Blake's 7, B7 Filk songs, > pictures, news, Conventions past and present, Blake's 7 fan clubs, Gareth > Thomas, etc. (also non-Blake's 7 zines at http://www.nas.com/~lknight ) > Redemption '01 23-25 Feb 2001 http://www.smof.com/redemption/ > ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 17:24:14 -0000 From: "Una McCormack" To: "[B7L]" Subject: Re: [B7L] Greetings Message-ID: <00f501bf8f6d$d759d860$0d01a8c0@hedge> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Marian wrote: > Greetings from a new subscriber. Hi Marion! Welcome aboard. > (I once caused a mighty row with my then boyfriend when I > changed channels to watch B7 while he was in the middle of watching a Very > Important World Champions League Football match.) During the first season, I backed up my sister when she wanted to watch 'Coronation St' and my brother wanted to watch 'B7'. But I was only 8 at the time. > (I've just finished reading your story 'Hunter', Neil. Greatly > enjoyed it, especially the bit where Avon gets hurt. You make him suffer so > beautifully. :-) ) Una ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 14:03:23 -0500 From: Meredith Dixon To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: (fwd) Re: [B7L] Re: Episode Reviews Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Thu, 16 Mar 2000 19:46:50 +1100, Kathryn Andersen wrote: >I'm going to jump in with a counter-opinion here. Probably more in support of Neil's school of thought, I guess. >Me, personally, I *cannot* make a web page for something unless I think it's going to be something new and useful. I wouldn't inflict a website on other people unless I thought it were something new and useful. But I've been cheerfully coding my own home page (which is on our family LAN, so no one has access to it but my husband and me) for some time, as a way to learn and practice coding. (This is, of course, entirely distinct from *Raven Days*, which is world-readable (and useful, I hope)). There's a difference between making a website, and making a world-readable website. -- Meredith Dixon Check out *Raven Days*, for victims and survivors of bullying. And for those who want to help. http://www.pobox.com/~dixonm/raven.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 07:38:38 +0000 From: Julia Jones To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Cc: Blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: Re: [B7L] Companions on the Liberator (was First Impressions: "Time Squad") Message-ID: In message , Pherber@aol.com writes >The only thing that might keep >Avon from pushing Harry out an airlock would be his medical skills, and he >might tolerate Romana for her advanced knowledge, but I think the rest of 'em >would pretty much be toast. I think he'd get on with Liz Shaw... -- Julia Jones "Don't philosophise with me, you electronic moron!" The Turing test - as interpreted by Kerr Avon. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 20:24:42 -0000 From: "Neil Faulkner" To: "b7" Subject: Re: [B7L] Re: Episode Reviews Message-ID: <000601bf8f85$f23bf060$e535fea9@neilfaulkner> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ebony wrote ... stacks, very well argued though it did miss the point a bit (though the *way* in which it missed the point is a positive point of contribution). First off, your site *is* a positive contribution to fandom - original poetry. It doesn't matter whether they're great poems or not, or exactly how valid their insights are. You've contributed your own perspective on aspects of B7 in an original form that adds to the greater body of fandom. Secondly, your frequent reference to 'intelligence' implies that I'm arguing from a position of intellectual elitism. I hope not (though I concede that I may be). I don't think 'intelligence' (whatever that might be) is a prerequisite for creativity or originality (certain types of creativity, maybe, but not creativity in itself). In fact, I suspect the two are totally unrelated. Nor indeed is creativity itself necessary for a 'good' website. One of the best - Lisa Williams' - offers nothing but frame captures. This is neither creative nor original work (except in the layout design, which is incidental to the content), but that doesn't matter because the site is a valuable resource for fans and represents what must be many long hours of dedicated slogwork for which I, at least, am extremely grateful. > What's your point? Any idiot has a 'right' to string those words together, > surely? You don't have to read them if you don't want to. (I'm aware that > Michael asked us to read his site, but I've moved on from Michael's site in > particular to web pages in general here.) I think it is Michael's site, or more specifically Michael himself, that hath roused my ire. His is not the only 'empty' B7 site. I've come across others in the course of browsing, so forgettable I don't know whose they were. Though most of them were just single pages in a larger site, a sort of 'PS I like B7 too'. They weren't making any grandiose claims for themselves. Michael's, OTOH, is pronouncing itself as the bee's knees on the basis of mimimal content (and links to non-existent pages). I think Meredith's assessment is pretty accurate - here is someone trying to take control of fandom with next to no credentials. Someone trying to be a big noise when he can't even whisper. Or as you put it yourself: > OTOH, it's a different story if they ask me to read their site and then >take the feedback badly. * >What's next, > forbidding those of us with less intelligence than you to speak in your > presence for fear that we might bore you?! If only I could be half so forbidding... No, of course not - as I've said, it's got nothing to do with intelligence, and if I end up bored by something then that's ultimately my loss. I'm going to turn this one around and suggest that you are trying to deny me the right to criticise:) > Fan lore (IMHO) is contributed to by fans of all backgrounds and all levels > of intelligence, a patchwork of ideas and theories woven together, some > original and interesting and some fairly boring, that seems to have evolved > in a very haphazard, illogical way over the years. Reading your post, I had > a vision of a nice shiny hi-tech machine, and a queue of people lining up > with their little squares of metal to see if it was shiny enough for the > *great creation* that is fan lore. I know, I exaggerate , but that's > honestly the image that came to mind. Just put it down to my odd thought > processes... I wouldn't disagree with your assessment of fan lore, nor with the implication that anyone can contribute to it. But simply *being* a fan does not add to fan lore (nor is there any reason why being a fan should do so - there is no obligation to contribute and I don't think I've ever said that there should be). So we're back to Michael and his website again - it adds *nothing* to the body of fandom. Likewise his mailing list has so far added next to nothing. In their current form, I hasten to add - things may change. > Call me a doormouse or whatever, but new talent is often stunted by such > very high expectations. Not everyone can be original Neil, not everyone has > the capacity. Even as I type, I can imagine you commenting that "they > shouldn't build web sites then." If that is so, I agree to differ. This > particular idiot will continue to fiddle with her site, just for the > pleasure of doing so . My thoughts on web sites are that if someone > wants to put up a site, good luck to them. If I don't like it I don't have > to read it. I think you're over-inflating my expectations. I don't really expect all that much. No, not everyone can be original, though I think most could be, given the right inspiration at the right moment. Oh ghod, I've got work to go to... Neil "I am not a man, I am a free number." ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 21:27:46 +0100 From: "Marian de Haan" To: Subject: Re: [B7L] Greetings Message-ID: <008001bf8f86$184c33a0$ceee72c3@marian-de-haan.multiweb.nl> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To Carol's: >> You've reminded me of a question that I've been meaning to ask. Did they dub >> in new voices/native languages when B7 was broadcast in non-English speaking >> countries? Jeroen replied: >Not in Holland! We happyly view everyting with subtitles! (That's why I bought the BBC tapes) Indeed. One of the few bits of the original broadcast (on Dutch tv) that I've always remembered was the part where Avon is miffed because Vila calls his highly sophisticated anti detection shield a gadget. And the main reason for that was that the subtitling was so painfully inaccurate that it grated on me. :-) Marian ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 20:08:14 -0000 From: "Julie Horner" To: Subject: Re: [B7L] First Impressions: "Time Squad" Message-ID: <009501bf8f83$700c3840$f89abc3e@orac> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: "Andrew Ellis" > Actually, that was a big disappointment for me. Every time Cally > went down to the surface, I was expecting the battle scene where > Cally directed the others movements allowing them to overcome > incredible odds, 'cause they only needed to break cover to actually > shoot, not observe. The nearest we get is in Countdown where we > get "by the rim, by the rim", and Shadow with "one two three four - > Cally". Oh well. I think in the early scenes in 'Bounty' Cally uses her telepathy to warn Blake of approaching guards. After that she comments about how she was getting out of practice. Perhaps it is one of those skills that does diminish if not regularly used. Therefore, when surrounded by non-telepaths she let the skill atrophy, perhaps accounting for why she didn't appear to use it much in the later series. Julie ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 08:47:08 EST From: "J MacQueen" To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: Re: [B7L] Companions on the Liberator (was First Impressions: "Time Squad") Message-ID: <20000316214708.50827.qmail@hotmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed >From: Murray Smith >Now if it was Jo Grant, I'd agree with you completely, as I wouldn't even >trust her to operate the teleport. Oh, but remember episodes where Jo was useful by spouting nonsense against the Master, or doing something equally silly in the eyes of the villain(s) of the week that saved the day. Just imagine the sheer and awesome power Orac could've directed against the Ultraworld brain if Jo Grant and Vila Restal had put their heads together! You're right - that's only one episode where she'd have any use. And anyone named Grant might've had a very short life expectancy around Avon at that time. Sorry, Murray, sorry, Matt (and hello). I have to agree with Harriet about Liz Shaw. Though what she'd think of someone resembling the late Captain Hawkins... Regards Joanne ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 00:01:38 +0200 (EET) From: Kai V Karmanheimo To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: Re: [B7L] Episode Reviews Message-ID: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Debbie wrote: Nicely put, and this had me thinking... I tend to refer to every computer in the series as "it", a thing, but of course the need to personalise them is strong, because of human voices and behaviour normally associated with human beings. However, speaking of foreign languages, how you categorise things *and* personalities is also influenced by the language you speak. With English, a foreign language in my case, the third person pronouns always define the person's gender, something my native tongue doesn't do. Zen speaks with a male voice, so you use the pronoun "he", because you have to use one or the other. Yet at the same you're already beginning to pigeonhole the personality. So perhaps it's because of this that I tend to gravitate towards "it" when thinking or discussing these things in English, as it shares some of the ambiguity of my native tongue (and I often encounter this as a translation problem, especially in sci-fi where you can have people arguing forever over whether to refer to some alien as he or she). Then again, all human languages and human thought contain the bipolar gender division, as well as the division between a person and a thing, so having a concept which doesn't conform to this scheme is a challenge to both language and thinking. If we ever get to sentient laptops, we may have to revise our vocabularies a bit. Kai ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 07:43:33 +1100 From: Kathryn Andersen To: "Blake's 7 list" Subject: Re: (fwd) Re: [B7L] Re: Episode Reviews Message-ID: <20000317074332.B23054@welkin.apana.org.au> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii On Thu, Mar 16, 2000 at 02:03:23PM -0500, Meredith Dixon wrote: > On Thu, 16 Mar 2000 19:46:50 +1100, Kathryn Andersen > wrote: > >Me, personally, I *cannot* make a web page for something unless I think it's going to be something new and useful. > > I wouldn't inflict a website on other people unless I thought it > were something new and useful. But I've been cheerfully coding > my own home page (which is on our family LAN, so no one has > access to it but my husband and me) for some time, as a way to > There's a difference between making a website, and making a > world-readable website. Except that most people don't have the option of making a private website. They either have a public website, or they don't have a website at all. So for them, the distinction which you make above is irrelevant. (BTW, Meredith, your ISP seems to have blacklisted my machine. I've tried several time to reply privately to some of your posts, and it comes back bounced with the error message of "SPAM filter", even though no spam has ever been sent from welkin. Is there anything that you can do?) Kathryn Andersen -- _--_|\ | Kathryn Andersen / \ | http://home.connexus.net.au/~kat \_.--.*/ | #include "standard/disclaimer.h" v | ------------| Melbourne -> Victoria -> Australia -> Southern Hemisphere Maranatha! | -> Earth -> Sol -> Milky Way Galaxy -> Universe ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 15:29:55 EST From: "J MacQueen" To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: Re: [B7L] Companions on the Liberator (was First Impressions: "Time Squad") Message-ID: <20000317042955.38359.qmail@hotmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed >From: Julia Jones >I think he'd get on with Liz Shaw... How did I mistake Julia for Harriet? Sorry for that. Regards Joanne ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 15:57:24 EST From: "J MacQueen" To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: Re: [B7L] Companions on the Liberator Message-ID: <20000317045724.95403.qmail@hotmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed I hope this post I'm replying to was intended for the Lyst... >From: "Ellynne G." > >And anyone named Grant might've had a very short life expectancy >around >Avon at that time. >Jo Grant / Anna Grant. You just had to make that evil connection, didn't >you? Surname only, Ellyne. Nothing fluffy and bird-brained about Mrs Chesku, as I'm sure you'll agree. >I like Dr. Who and the companions, but I have to admit, Tegan would have >been let off at the first stop. It's the accent, right? A dreadful thing to be confronted with in a .wav file after a lapse of some years, even for someone from the same landmass. It can't be the opinionated personality - they must've been used to that from Orac, at the very least. >Nyssa might have been accepted because of her technical skills. Could go a bit like Cally, though - curly-headed alien female with medical skills - hmm. >Peri and a certain redhead - gone and gone fast. Oh, yes indeedy. Last week would not be too soon. >Adric on the other hand - remember how his people could suffer major >injuries and recover quickly? B7 wouln't have made the DW mistake of >underusing this talent ("Looks dangerous, send Adric." "They're shooting, >send Adric." "We don't know how bad that plague is, send Adric." etc). >How long Adric would have put up with this kind of treatment is another >story. Adric as Og alternative! You know very well why he'd be sent on the most dangerous missions - nothing at all to do with his abilities to recover quickly! >As for Turlough - Hey, another entry in the Avon's long lost >brother catagory! With Ibbotson as a relative of Vila, probably... Who else? Ian and Barbara might be tolerated better than most, due to the likelihood of them having some understanding of what was happening, and Barbara might work well with Blake. Either of the Romanas would intrigue a certain person, a la Levett in Mission to Destiny, quite apart from sheer technical knowledge. I don't think I'd want to inflict the crew on Jamie - he'd be driven batty by Vila's demands to know why he was wearing a skirt, and the rest would probably discount him as a useless primitive. Any member of UNIT, up to and including the Brigadier, might be mistaken for Federation troops - hardly healthy. I still like the idea of Liz Shaw meeting the crew - preferably the series 1 / series 2 crew. Regards Joanne ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 13:08:03 +1100 From: Kathryn Andersen To: "Blake's 7 list" Subject: Re: [B7L] Companions on the Liberator (was First Impressions: "Time Squad") Message-ID: <20000317130803.A23757@welkin.apana.org.au> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii On Fri, Mar 17, 2000 at 08:47:08AM -0500, J MacQueen wrote: > > I have to agree with Harriet about Liz Shaw. Though what she'd think of > someone resembling the late Captain Hawkins... But did she actually meet Captain Hawkins? Or would she ever have met him in a universe set-up such that she would meet Avon? I mean, are we talking time travel, parallel universes, or a Liz Shaw who is the *B7* version of Liz Shaw, not the original DW Liz Shaw? In any of these cases, there wouldn't really be a problem with Captain Hawkins - he'd either be an ancestor, a parallel-universe equivalent, or she would never have met him. (I know, why do I have to bring *logic* into the discussion - spoils everything.) (smile) Kathryn Andersen (less than a week!) -- _--_|\ | Kathryn Andersen / \ | http://home.connexus.net.au/~kat \_.--.*/ | #include "standard/disclaimer.h" v | ------------| Melbourne -> Victoria -> Australia -> Southern Hemisphere Maranatha! | -> Earth -> Sol -> Milky Way Galaxy -> Universe ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 19:53:33 +1100 From: Margaret To: "blakes7@lysator.liu.se" Subject: [B7L] Travii and Gan Pictures! Message-ID: <38D1F28D.F77B3BB1@mailandnews.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Well, I'm looking for some. For my little webpage, I'm putting together a collection of graphics designed for webpage use - ie, backgrounds and lines and icons. Now, most of the characters have lots and lots of free-to-use images to convert into pretty webgraphics. Except, Gan and Travis 1 & 2. Can anyone help me with a pointer to some good Gan and Travii images that I can use? Margaret. "I built it, it's a sculpture." Vila, _Terminal_. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 09:46:40 -0000 From: Alison Page To: "'blakes7@lysator.liu.se'" Subject: [B7L] sexing the box (was Episode Reviews) Message-ID: <21B0197931E1D211A26E0008C79F6C4AB0C44D@BRAMLEY> Content-Type: text/plain This is a very interesting, and novel, topic (as far as I know) Kai's post was particularly fascinating, coming from someone whose native language is not Indo-European (I presume you are a Finnish speaker Kai) > Then again, all human languages and human thought contain the bipolar gender division, as well as the division > between a person and a thing, so having a concept which doesn't conform to this scheme is a challenge to both > language and thinking. If we ever get to sentient laptops, we may have to revise our vocabularies a bit. Kai I definitely think of Orac as male, Slave less so, and Zen I think does seem more of a transcendent being without gender. Perhaps this is because human personality gradually fades out as you go along that series. Orac was deliberately given a male human personality. Slave was designed as a caricature of a human personality, and Zen is quite alien. I was wondering if we think of ourselves, our 'being' (hope this isn't too transcendental) as gendered. I'm not sure that I do. You obviously exist as a gendered being, but when your concept of yourself first forms, as a pre-verbal child, is that an important part of what you are? I know Freud would say yes, your self image forms as you identify your sexual existence, but I'm not convinced. I think, inside, I just think of myself as 'me', a pre-gender idea from way back when I was a baby. So perhaps we need a gender-neutral term to refer to the feeling of being a sentient entity, which we could then apply to sentient artificial minds (if they are ever made) and aliens without human gender, and of course to gods (at least the sexless ones). Alison ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 09:27:32 +0000 From: Russ Massey To: J MacQueen Cc: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: Re: [B7L] Companions on the Liberator Message-ID: In message <20000317045724.95403.qmail@hotmail.com>, J MacQueen writes > > >It's the accent, right? A dreadful thing to be confronted with in a .wav >file after a lapse of some years, even for someone from the same landmass. >It can't be the opinionated personality - they must've been used to that >from Orac, at the very least. > Yes, but Orac was 'too useful to destroy'. I don't think the same could ever be said of Tegan. >>Nyssa might have been accepted because of her technical skills. > >Could go a bit like Cally, though - curly-headed alien female with medical >skills - hmm. > People tend to underestimate Nyssa's ruthlessness. She came from a supposedly Utopian culture, yet the first time we see her she uses her political clout to browbeat underlings, persuades a policeman to break the law by bribing him and shows a distinct steak of selfish pragmatism. In many later stories she's the first to pick up any handy weapon in her vicinity and quote happily guns down several of the Chancellry Guards on Gallifry in order to reach the endangered Doctor. With slightly more arrogance she'd be a female Avon! >>Peri and a certain redhead - gone and gone fast. > >Oh, yes indeedy. Last week would not be too soon. > I agree concerning Peri - it's the accent problem again, as well as the constant whining and complaining. Vila couldn't stand the competition. I have to confess a sneaking soft spot for the 'redhead' however. Mel was brave, intelligent, curious and highly moral. I think she'd have backed Blake all the way after first hand experience of the Federation. And for what it's worth, she'd always have trusted him :o -- Russ Massey ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 16:09:10 GMT From: "Mat Shayde" To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: Re: [B7L] Companions on the Liberator Message-ID: <20000317160911.14602.qmail@hotmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed >People tend to underestimate Nyssa's ruthlessness. She came from a >supposedly Utopian culture, yet the first time we see her she uses >her >political clout to browbeat underlings, persuades a policeman to >break the >law by bribing him and shows a distinct steak of selfish >pragmatism. In many later stories she's the first to pick up any >handy >weapon in her vicinity and quite happily guns down several of >the >Chancellry Guards on Gallifry in order to reach the endangered >Doctor. >With slightly more arrogance she'd be a female Avon! Not sure if I'd go so far to say she could be a female Avon - she's just too nice. Can anyone see Avon staying behind to help cure terminally ill people? I think not! However it is nice to see someone else acknowledge Nyssa's more ruthless side. In her first story she adapts a tool into a weapon and blasts people left, right and centre! She'd give as good as she got on Liberator. >I agree concerning Peri - it's the accent problem again, as well as >the >constant whining and complaining. Hhhm, know what you mean - very few useful skills too. However for anyone who likes the character but hates the whining I reccommend the new Dr Who audios from Big Finish - she doesn't whine at all and the accent is much less abrasive. >I have to confess a sneaking soft spot for the 'redhead' >however. Mel was brave, intelligent, curious and highly moral. I >think >she'd have backed Blake all the way after first hand >experience of the >Federation. And for what it's worth, she'd always >have trusted him. And of course as a computer programmer with a photographic memory she might have given Avon a run for his money! :) Zoe similarly had computer skills, a photographic memory and a high intelligence. And she was less emotional than Mel - more Avon's type! ;) ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com -------------------------------- End of blakes7-d Digest V00 Issue #72 *************************************