It's one of those eps with a parallel structure, which I like a lot. Blake's relationship with his crew vs Travis's with his ex-command (and that cruel touch where Par says he stuck with Travis because whatever else the man was, he did keep them safe - just as well poor Blake didn't hear that). Par is a brilliant cameo in himself. And the agonising Blake/Avon scene near the start, where you just want to shake A and say: stop saying things you don't mean and don't even want to hear yourself saying. And B's deadly riposte to "At least I don't get them killed": true, Avon, with all its implied "because they wouldn't follow you that far". Actually I don't even mind the alien, though I know some find her annoying.
I think Trial is the mirror image of Voice from the Past: i.e., it's HALF fucking brilliant, half sucks big rocks, but in the case of Trial "the bits with Travis are great" and in VftP "the bits with Travis are unbelievably crap."
I had always had the same opinion of 'Trial', but watching it back this time, the scenes down on Zil's planet turned out to be: 1. not as many as remembered and 2. not even as bad as I remembered! Plus the ancillary scenes in this plotline on the Liberator are really brilliant.
The structure of it really leapt out this time, and seemed to get cleverer and more complex the more I thought about it. I hadn't worked out that cruel touch with Par, and was struggling to look for connections between him and the Liberator plotline - thank you for that!
I was a lot more forgiving of the alien this time too.
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Date: 2003-11-15 01:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-15 02:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-15 05:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-16 04:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-16 04:05 pm (UTC)I was a lot more forgiving of the alien this time too.
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Date: 2003-11-16 04:07 pm (UTC)