Series 9 Episode 8 discussion

[lwhite53]

(10-11-2010 05:41 PM)tastiger Wrote:  

(10-11-2010 01:25 PM)BravoNine Wrote:  I wish the writers had made it clearer, but all that logic seems to have gotten convoluted under Lucas/John's love of Maya. I wished they just dropped Maya all together and focused on his two lives and the home desired with MI5.

You brought up a very good point. I also never connected with Maya/Lucas and it indeed would have been more powerful an angle to the story if the emphasis on the Lucas/John struggle was purely done because of his devotion to Harry & the MI-5 team. The writers could have shown Lucas trying to handle this Albany switch as a way to once again prove his real loyalty to MI5 and in the end die because of it....but no....they have to throw in Maya and make his whole existence reliant on his love for her. That's what grates on my nerves.

I've been thinking a lot about this, the "Lucas did it all for the love of Maya" scenario," and have come to a realization that that's exactly where the writers went wrong and why the story doesn't hold together, at a fundamental level.

From a psychological perspective, Maya could never have been the "trigger" for Lucas' unraveling. In fact, no woman would have been. All Lucas' relationships with women were fleeting and ephemeral -- intense while happening and then forgotten quickly when the next woman came along. It's his relationships with men that are the psychological keystones of his life. Vaughn, Kachimov, Darshavin and Harry -- all had far-reaching and life-altering effects on Lucas. Given that kind of personal history, only a man could have been the catalyst for Lucas' devolution.

Had the Lucas story arc been written this way, it might have worked. The Maya character muddled the plot and never really rang true, because she wasn't.

Where's Howard Brenton when you need him? Of all the spooks writers, he'd probably have gotten it right.