How did you feel about Season 9?

[binkie]

(15-11-2010 04:53 AM)BravoNine Wrote:  I think binkie said exactly what I wanted to say! Nice!

I would just like add that perhaps one of the things that really pissed me off the most about Series 9 was how they turned what was Lucas's beautiful gift of ultimate sacrifice and loyalty for his country and his team into this dark twisted perverted sense of self-punishment and need for redemption. Now all his greatest moments and his greatest words from the previous 2 series rings hollow and untrue, where there was once deep meaning, now they are just simple meaningless excuses and lies.

I agree with you completely on this, BravoNine. Of all the nonsense that was contained in, and suggested by, the Lucas plotline, this was in many ways the worst. Not only is it a clear and wilfully ignorant denial of the purpose and imperative of Lucas' character and rhetorical function over the preceding seasons, it undoes such a lot of coherence of other plot and character beats from those seasons as well. It is something to unravel one character, quite another thing to do the same to other characters whose integrity and capability is now also called into question. This might not matter so much if these were peripheral characters, largely irrelevant to the internal workings of the show, but in this case they are not. We are supposed still to be able to appreciate characters like Harry, Malcolm, Ros, Adam, even Connie, whose every character and professional facet is now cast in a very questionable light.

There are also, as you suggest, deeply disturbing moral aspects to the conclusions drawn by season 9 in relation to Lucas' imprisonment and the value of that experience to both the character and the Service. One of the biggest problems I have with the way the writers of this season chose to present this strand lies in the area of responsibility. I would suggest there is a level of moral responsibility inherent in the use of certain plot devices for entertainment purposes, and the depiction of torture and its emotional and psychological consequences and context is absolutely deserving of this responsibility. I cannot stress enough the extent to which I feel season 9 denied and corrupted that responsibility.

I know a (to me, surprising) number of Spooks viewers never really took to Lucas, and were unconvinced by his backstory(!) and by RA's performance. I find this genuinely baffling. I found Lucas a fascinating and intriguing character, full of potential and nuance. I thought the performance of the character was outstanding. Every cognitive process, and suppression of process, was visible and painfully apparent.

Some years ago, I was in correspondence with someone who had been a POW at Changi. He was captured after the fall of Singapore in February 1942, and was interned by the Japanese until the summer of 1946. He worked on the Burma railway. His expression, his manner and his quality of humanity was very much like that of the Lucas we saw in seasons 7 and 8. I will post more on this in the Lucas thread, because it is worth underlining the quiet and subtle dramatic power of this performance. Here, though, I will just say that I agree with your disappointment at the way this element of Lucas' story was given a retrospective cast it ill-deserved. There is a vast moral distance between illuminating a hidden facet of a known, or communicated, story and overwriting the character of that story for selfish purposes. It seems to me that the writers of season 9 either did not appreciate, or did not care, about this difference.