Episode 7 Discussion [rewatch]

[Silktie]

(28-02-2010 06:27 PM)JHyde Wrote:  I happen to agree with Zoe on this one too, although I do think Harry does try to protect people on his team. I don't care if she came across as bitchy - I liked that JJ had someone to advocate for him. I'm not being sentimental just because he was a kid, but rather because when they are, in part, a victim as well as a culprit, there should be someone there speaking on their behalf when they can't.

For me, this is as ruthless as Harry gets on the show. Mainly because it's about him saving his own neck and then putting a kid's on the line. It's interesting to think about at what age would it have been inappropriate for them to send JJ in there. 12? 10? Given the 'set of skills' (as Silktie so succinctly put it on the Harry thread) that JJ brings, you'd think that it wouldn't matter how young he was theoretically. It's about his judgement and perception that this moral argument is centred upon. To put it another way: at what point can you ask someone to put their life on the line for their country?

When I watched the episode first time round, this is exactly how I felt about it too. But there are some subtleties I only picked up on the rewatch. Harry's initial decision to use JJ had nothing to do with saving his own neck, as he did not know at that stage that the kid had those codes in his head. So his decision was purely based on finding someone to act as their clean skin. Harry was still, at that stage, going to confess to the DG that he lost the codes. It remains an incredibly ruthless decision, but at least it wasn't initially based on self interest.

A agree that it was altruistic of Denton to let MI5 have JJ, but this only came after he had been using his brother's skills for criminal purposes for goodness knows how long. I still think there was a healthy dose of self interest in that decision, as Denton did not want MI5 to look into his affairs too closely.

And I really don't know whether I buy JJ's decision to pass on the education at the end. This is a particularly intelligent kid who must have realised what a tremendous opportunity he was being offered, I just think most intelligent kids would have jumped at the chance.