More Things I Didn't Write Long Ago
Aug. 22nd, 2012 10:00 pm![[personal profile]](/%20https://www.npmjs.com/package/ocr-https-www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
strangerIn Blakes 7, Cally was introduced as a guerrilla resistance fighter, estranged from her home planet Auron, and shown to be a projective telepath, but explicitly not able to receive thoughts. In the very next episode, and some later episodes, she's influenced or controlled "telepathically" by various alien intelligences who thus endanger the Liberator and its crew, putting Cally in need of rescue. This apparent contradiction about how telepathy works suggests, aside from Terry Nation knowing more about plot devices than SF, that Cally's background story isn't complete.
The Blakes 7 Earth-based Federation, an Orwellian tyranny, needs little retconning to be a descendant of Trek's more benign but often creepily big-brother-ish Federation. Thus Cally's story:
Cally learned early in childhood that her ears could hear but her mind was deaf; worse, she couldn't guard herself against any passing mind that touched hers. On one summer excursion, a sehlat caused her to growl and claw and attack her siblings. She was not yet old enough to carry weapons of her own, but the omen worried her. Her sibling-group sent her to Auron's cousin world Rhiannsu, and there she learned of weapons not only for art and exercise, but as tools of political philosophy.
She made a decision to travel to Saurian major, to join with dissidents in opposing the human Federation's latest massacre and takeover. Cally did not understand how humans governed themselves without telepathy, but she didn't understand Auron's government of telepaths, either. When the other dissidents had fallen and she too might have fallen, she met Blake.
She could not hear his mind, but she felt his charisma claiming her for his crusade against the Federation. Blake's presence could not shield her from all the predators in the galaxy, but it pulled her away from all others that tried to claim her, for as long as she travelled with him.
The Blakes 7 Earth-based Federation, an Orwellian tyranny, needs little retconning to be a descendant of Trek's more benign but often creepily big-brother-ish Federation. Thus Cally's story:
Cally learned early in childhood that her ears could hear but her mind was deaf; worse, she couldn't guard herself against any passing mind that touched hers. On one summer excursion, a sehlat caused her to growl and claw and attack her siblings. She was not yet old enough to carry weapons of her own, but the omen worried her. Her sibling-group sent her to Auron's cousin world Rhiannsu, and there she learned of weapons not only for art and exercise, but as tools of political philosophy.
She made a decision to travel to Saurian major, to join with dissidents in opposing the human Federation's latest massacre and takeover. Cally did not understand how humans governed themselves without telepathy, but she didn't understand Auron's government of telepaths, either. When the other dissidents had fallen and she too might have fallen, she met Blake.
She could not hear his mind, but she felt his charisma claiming her for his crusade against the Federation. Blake's presence could not shield her from all the predators in the galaxy, but it pulled her away from all others that tried to claim her, for as long as she travelled with him.
