[spoilers] Lucas. Just Lucas.

[binkie]

(25-11-2010 12:00 AM)Byatil Wrote:  We always view Lucas as a loyal, courageous man who is brave enough to die for his team. But could we actually say his work for MI5 post-Russia is more of a selfish indulgence? I'm assuming that in his mind, there are no other options. It's not as if he could just go home and get a job at the post office or something!

See, that’s why I love this forum Straight to the good stuff without the tiresome essays. The post office thing is absolutely the point, and absolutely the problem. We know Lucas needs the time he spent in prison, and his experiences of interrogation and torture, to mean something – he says as much to Harry in 7.3. He was detained because he was an MI5 officer, and was treated the way he was for the same reason. However horrific the logic, that means something. That speaks to a value that was placed on him. To some extent, that is also what kept him alive: potential future value. The importance of retaining an element of that value is impossible to over-estimate. Yes, it is selfish to some degree (he seems little concerned at the idea that he might not be fit for service, and that this might place his colleagues at risk, for example), but selfishness is also self-preservation. And that means something.

(25-11-2010 10:59 AM)Belle Wrote:  He longes to be the pre-russia Lucas, but somehow he lost that person whilst in prison.
Everything he does is a quest to try to become that Lucas again.

I understand what you mean when you say this, but I’m not convinced Lucas does actually want to ‘be’ his pre-Moscow self in the way you suggest. I think the situation is rather more complex. It will almost certainly be very important to Lucas now that his time in prison not be dismissed as an eight year black hole. The initial expression on his face in 7.1 when Malcolm says: “Is it really eight years?” is one almost of irritation, then confusion and disappointment, before softening into conciliation and the placatory comment about Russian prisons being like holiday camps: “They have mattresses and everything.” Lucas is beginning to realise here that those eight years will never mean the same to other people as they do to him. He will actually become, in some ways, quite protective of those years. By the time of 8.7 he is even able to make jokes about them, characterising them to the Hindu translator as an: ”eight year reading sabbatical”. That time belongs to him – it is literally part of him, written on his skin - and it is for him to make sure it continues to have meaning. Undoing that time, reversing through the black hole, is unthinkable. To do so would be to strip that huge portion of his time, and all the pieces of his life that went into making it, of any value. I think Lucas probably looks fondly on his pre-Moscow self, in the same way he would at childhood pictures. But I think he recognises it would be dangerous to think he could be that person now, and that it would be equally dangerous to want that.

(25-11-2010 03:28 PM)WhiteSwan Wrote:  ...I see the problem he has with Harry, but I've never seen that Lucas has a problem with his country or that he is lacking patriotism. He might be critical of current politics, but of course that's not the same as being unpatriotic.

This is a good critical distillation of a very knotty concept. I like it!

(25-11-2010 03:28 PM)WhiteSwan Wrote:  Apart from Harry there is one other person he blames for his treatment in prison and that's Darshavin in that great episode 8.4. And that scene, when he accuses Darshavin of having him kept in solitary confinement and having beaten and tortured him, for me is also the moment when he manages to really break free from the power that man still had over him, at least to a certain extent.

I’m not sure Lucas blames Darshavin for anything exactly. One of the things that so impressed me about the way Spooks chose to deal with the continuing theme of Lucas’ post-release reality was the mature and complex approach taken by the show in depicting the relationships in which he was situated before, during and after his time in prison. I will definitely return to this when I write up 8.4 (whenever that turns out to be!), but what really strikes me about the relationship between Lucas and Oleg, on one level at least, is the extent to which it seems both men are entirely aware of the necessity of their respective parts in the sustenance of the relationship. Oleg’s part required him to interrogate someone (that was his ‘reward’, remember, for bravery in Russia’s war with Afghanistan), and Lucas’ part required him to be interrogated. There is a classical existential theme at work here about the role of truth in torture (Sartre really must have been a great guest at parties ).

(25-11-2010 03:28 PM)WhiteSwan Wrote:  My impression is that Lucas has probably always been very meticulous, careful, methodical and controlled. For 8 years he had no control whatsoever over his life... But again I think it's nothing abnormal, it's nothing which would hint at severe psychological problems.

I have to say, I do think you are under-estimating the effects of the kind of institutional and cultural control to which Lucas would have been subjected in prison. No one is suggesting that Lucas is a psychological wreck. But it is quite clear from the narrative structure of seasons 7/8, and the rhetorical function of this character within it, that Lucas is different now. It doesn’t have to mean he is in need of hospitalisation or medication, and I think you are right to shy away from the idea of abnormality. However, I think it is important to accept that Lucas has experienced a catastrophic trauma that it was almost entirely beyond his ability to control. For eight years he was essentially invisible to anyone who was not actively trying to intimidate, injure or otherwise subdue him in some way. We cannot think this will have had no effect on his thinking or his behaviour.

(25-11-2010 03:28 PM)WhiteSwan Wrote:  (And by the way, as for me the JB story never happened and Lucas is still alive, I'm using present tense when writing about him).

I’m with you all the way on that one, right down to the use of the present tense XX (although, I think I may have allowed Lucas to die in the explosion at the end of season 8. I haven’t quite made up my mind.)

Finally (finally!): I am going to be a pedant again... because I am a pedant. Harry’s reference to ‘John’ in the rooftop scene of 9.8 is in fact Regnum Defende, the motto of the Secret Service. It means “defend the realm”, and is invoked by Harry as a means of underlining the extent of ‘John’s’ betrayal. I’m done being pedantic now