Series 9 Episode 8 discussion

[BravoNine]

Perhaps we will discover in Series 10 that evil plot bunnies took over the writers' room and forced them to make this incoherent storyline about Lucas. And now the MI5 team has to save the world from evil plot bunnies! I could take this storyline!

Yeah, RA's availability doesn't give out much hope that Series 10 will give any decent explanation, who knows, I can only hope at this point.

I don't think split personality would be a bad way to go, Spooks may not be that type of drama but Lucas with his years spent being tortured has got to end up with psychological issues and it would certainly be pertinent for them to bring that to the forefront with maybe Lucas developing a harsher and darker personality that helped him survive 8 years in a Russian prison.

But the writing doesn't support the whole psychological issues at all, all the writing has told us is that our Lucas is really John Bateman who bombed an embassy, killed his friend for his passport, took over his job and decided he wanted to play hero, spent 8 years in prison and torture as self-punishment, and then when Vaughn came back, he suddenly remembered Maya and risked everything to go be with her. The writing is simply all over the place, one second Lucas is good, he's risking his life for his team, and next second he's some evil dude who just loves Maya. It's just completely crazy.

The writing seems to make it that John/Lucas has just been deceiving everyone all along and he knew exactly what he was doing, the lines and dialogs spoken points to that this isn't some mental split personality issue, that John/Lucas had been lying this whole time knowingly, that he was simply pretending to be a big hero and loves this heroic life.

Honestly a split personality would have been better, I mean, no NORMAL person just decide to blow up an embassy just to "be someone" and because he got stranded on a foreign continent! I'm sorry, but no sane person does that, they don't kill their friends for passports and then take over their job and play hero, this is not something that normal people do! I am crazy enough by normal human standards and my idea was only to steal a row-boat! Since when does being stranded on a foreign continent constitute as go blow up an embassy? I mean, he couldn't simply find a phone and call someone?

At this point looking at his stupidity, maybe I should be surprised that he got caught in Moscow....

So if the writers trying to illustrate that he's mentally insane, they failed to do a decent explanation, and if they're trying to illustrate that John/Lucas is simply evil, they failed to do a half-decent explanation of that as well.

The reasons we were given were half-ass, quickly glossed over, and it felt like the writers thought if they add in Beth saying all the things that the fans believed Lucas to be, that somehow the fans would be okay with the change. But I'm certainly not, it was a stupid explanation and weak one that Harry gave the Home Secretary about how John ended up as Lucas, any child with half a brain can see the gigantic plot hole the size of the moon. Just how bad is MI5 security? It's one thing to change your information after you gain access into the service, but I am to believe that after such a throughough vetting process that NO ONE saw the "real" Lucas North's face? No one thought, "oh hey, this guy looks different!" Surely SOMEONE in the vetting process would have at least seen a photograph? It's just ridiculous, you don't walk in for a interview and poof you're MI5, I've faced more security picking up my brother from day-care!!!!