Plot-holes

[binkie]

(15-03-2011 10:49 PM)A Cousin Wrote:  So here are my questions to all plot-holers. Are there plot holes in S9 that you would have accepted at face value or been willing to overlook if there hadn't been so doggone many of them? Because, lets be honest, the willing suspension of disbelief has always been necessary to some extent with Spooks from the beginning. Is there one (or two) plot holes above all others that, if they hadn't done them or had explained them sufficiently, would have made the Lucas portion of S9 work for you? Accepting the idea of Lucas as an evil sociopath of epic proportions as a given, I am curious to find out what did work for you and/or how you would have fixed what didn't work for you to make it work for you.

Oh! So much to cover... so much texture... so much potential for over-answering

I think it’s probably important to establish from the outset the circular, and self-obliterating, nature of the problem. Your question pre-supposes its own conclusion (I think, therefore I am). At the same time, most of the discussion in this thread is rooted in the pre-supposition of an illogic in the conclusion. In this context, there is no “making the Lucas portion of S9 work”, there is only “what should the writers have done that wasn’t what they did?” This isn’t a criticism of the question – which is an excellent thought problem – it’s just a statement in deference to the irresolvable nature of the dilemma at hand. And it is a genuine dilemma as neither solution is practically acceptable, in either narrative or character terms. I have, as you might imagine, every sympathy with WhiteSwan:

(15-03-2011 11:55 PM)WhiteSwan Wrote:  Well, for me the biggest plot hole of all was exactly that - trying to tell us that Lucas wasn't really the Lucas of S7 and S8, but that he was an evil psychopath instead.

I do appreciate that your question is not: list the many and varied ways in which you deem this plot development to have failed. I do want to answer the question you have asked (it seems a fair trade for wading through the rest of this post!). I do want to discover a satisfactory accommodation of this plot development before I simply explode with the frustration of not being able to do so. However (you knew there would be a ‘however’), I also want to maintain the critical capability which identifies the fundamental reasons for my inability to accept Lucas-is-John as a conclusion for the character of Lucas:

- Cognition
- Moral purpose
- Logical construct

I accept that these look less like plot holes than they do oversights or compromises in writing or character concept terms. They do, by their nature, though, inform the success of the plot, and they are a substantial part of the willingness to flag up plot holes. At the same time, they are symptomatic of the logical and functional difficulty of the success of Lucas-is-John.

Ridiculousness at the level of necessary functional service of the theme is perfectly acceptable. We didn’t bat an eyelid when, in 7.8, Lucas conjured a complete and working knowledge of the London Underground service tunnel system (or, anyway, if we did bat an eyelid, we were too polite to mention it again!). Ridiculousness at the level of wilful ignorance - and transference of ignorance – by omission or denial of narrative or character integrity is harder to overcome. These are the big holes that make the little ones so much more apparent, and so much less tolerable. The cognitive coherence of Lucas’ character in seasons 7/8 – indeed, the cognitive object of Lucas’ character in these seasons – is what renders the lack of cognitive clarity in the character of Lucas-is-John the plot hole into which all other elements of the story affected by the conceit must necessarily fall. It is absolutely a problem of structure, and one which is anticipated by Byatil’s point that:

(16-03-2011 06:00 PM)Byatil Wrote:  Those kind of plot-holes aren't actually too major; but they become so when the rest of the plot is on the brink of falling apart. Once you notice the big holes, the little holes seem to stand out more than they perhaps should.

Thematically, Lucas-is-John was an outstanding piece of service to the continuing, and consistently well-managed, rhetoric built up by this show around questions of character, motive and certainty. It was not, on a thematic level, a poor decision to introduce the concept that became Lucas-is-John. The shame of it was that the decision to do so was clearly taken only in advance of season 9, meaning Richard Armitage had had no opportunity to include John at even a buried level of his performance as Lucas. Even before we meet Vuaghan at the end of 9.1, we have been watching Armitage perform as Lucas-is-John (we just haven’t known it for what it was) and it is distracting. It is distracting in real time, because it has no context, and it is distracting in retrospect because, although the (rhetorically inconsistent and contradictory) trigger mechanism that is Vaughan and/or the suitcase has yet to be activated, Lucas-is-John is already present in the narrative. It just underlines the extent to which the lack of effort in communicating the operative function of Lucas-is-John undermines the successful realisation of the conceit in anything other than broad thematic terms.

Allied to this is the problem highlighted by HellsBells:

(16-03-2011 12:50 PM)HellsBells Wrote:  I also wanted more of an explanation as to how someone can live a completely different life for 15 years, not just a different name but a totally different set of moral values.

Obviously, the question of morality, and its operation and potential for compromise, is extraordinarily intricate and complex. Morality is, as HellsBells suggests, more than just behaving well, or ‘doing the right thing’. Byatil has also reflected on this question here: http://www.spooksforum.co.uk/thread-1504-page-3.html and the potential for deference to a moral context that is not one’s own is a defining feature both of religious conversion and of survival under any totalitarian system of government. The matter of belief in, or acceptance of, a moral code is not necessarily a matter relative to observation of that code. We could go along with the assertion of season 9 that the Lucas of seasons 7/8 was a creation of the moral fantasy of Lucas-is-John. However, the necessary return to the inescapable principle of cognition makes this difficult to accept. I like the point raised by BravoNine that:

(16-03-2011 04:39 AM)BravoNine Wrote:  Even Connie being the Russian turncoat that she is made sense with her change as it was just her philosophy that turned during her years at MI5, she wasn't suddenly some random Russian woman who loved her country so much....

Connie was the personification of an occupational hazard for the security service: a fiercely intelligent, adaptive, yet determinist, thinker with a first class problem-solving brain. Her talent was to work out the function of a system from within the system. That is what she did when she was on the Renaissance mission, and that is what informed her re-evaluation of the system from which she had come. Her actions, her moral justification, her logical application and her cognitive resolution all made sense as cogs in the wheel of her other-self. This cannot be made to work in the case of Lucas/Lucas-is-John because the moral desperation of Lucas-is-John does not inform the adherence to the notion of a social contract so evident in Lucas’ behaviour and articulation. If we are to accept Lucas as John’s other-self, we must see more by way of moral and logical transfer. At this point of the argument we find ourselves back again at the need to appreciate cognitive coherence. This is not the same thing as expressible logic – it is not an insistence that Lucas-is-John should behave in a manner that is predictable, or even in a way which ‘makes sense’. But, to enjoy a moment in which Lucas-is-John “works”, there has to be a clearly identifiable means by which the fiction is maintained, and this has to extend beyond the retrospective projection of cognitive (self-)deception onto cognitive (self-)confidence. If I am to accept “ the idea of Lucas as an evil sociopath of epic proportions”, I want a better explanation of where the epic sociopathy has been over the last 15 years, and how its supression and reassertion have been accomplished by the same cognitive and moral construct that maintained a character without it. This has perhaps less to do with plot than it does with the order of decision-making in conceiving of the plot in the first place.

I hope this wasn’t too much of a deviation from the intent behind your question. I didn’t mean it to be a tangential argument. I suppose my problem in answering the question is that my problem with the plot is not a problem with the plot (!). My problem is with the lack of attention given to the extra-narrative mechanism by which the plot had been maintained, and with the logical fallacy of rendering this development by use of this character. But you knew that already