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I always liked the idea of Tanith Lee more than her actual writing, liked her more when I saw she was a writer on 2 episodes of Blake’s 7, but sometimes I don’t give a book/author enough of a chance e.g. I’ve tried reading Babel-17 and Beyond The Blue Horizon about 12 times each now and I just can’t conjure up the willpower to go past the second chapter, same for The Left Hand Of Darkness + City And The City, and also the same for the 3 Tanith Lee books I’ve seen in the library – Mortal Suns, Black Unicorn, Space Is Just A Starry Night – I pick them up and try the first page and then another random page in the middle somewhere and I just can’t do it, could be fatigue, lack of interest in unicorns, the sense that I should be writing something myself or learning Urdu with/for Amir, I don’t know exactly, but cos I still like the idea of Tanith Lee, even more so after I did some amateurish research, found out she wrote in many different genres, like me, has incredible range, was a bit weird in person, a bit Gothic/goth, a bit absurd, a bit of an Ancient Greek fanatic, I’ve decided to cover her two-fold: one, via the Blake’s 7 episode, Sarcophagus, and two, via whatever tangents hit me while watching it, hopefully ley lines to her other work, which I’m ready to hunt for online or at least read the synopsis of.
Note: that’s about the ninth or tenth time I’ve used ‘ley lines’ recently, I can’t stop, should probably try to veer back to rhizomes, ley lines are deeper though, of the Earth, magickal, threatening, comfortable etc.
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Blake’s 7
Season 3 Episode 9
Sarcophagus
Written by: Tanith Lee + Terry Nation
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I assume Terry Nation was there for the sake of series/character continuity, not as the prime mover cos the episode summary says Cally is feeling alone, depressed, vulnerable until an alien lifeforce reaches out and takes over her mind [also altering her wardrobe from guerilla-in-autumn to something loose, flowing and occult-ish].
Not sure if this is implying a dormant feminine aspect of Cally; she was never utilised that well in the series overall, even the guerilla background that she was introduced with was sidelined to a large degree during the series, a definite mistake that DS9 never made with Kira [she chafed against her new diplomat duties as any lifelong rebel would].
Note: this is all based on my memory of watching Blake’s 7 all the way through about eight years ago. Could be mistaken in parts/on everything.
Is Tanith pushing the [mystical] feminine in Sarcophagus?
The alien force is not gender-defined, functions as an invading entity, attempts to have Cally murder Avon at the end of the episode.
I know that last bit cos I just read the plot summary on the Blake’s 7 wiki.
Wasn’t supposed to do that, doesn’t matter much, like I said, I’ve seen all the episodes before, barely remember anything from Sarcophagus.
I haven’t read the middle part of the summary.
They find an alien ship?
Seems like it.
It’s not as detailed as the Trek summaries over at Memory Alpha, doesn’t give you every little movement or plot beat.
I’ll go back to the episode now.
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A bit of background from my memory of watching the series before, eight or nine or seven years ago.
Both Jenna [the ship’s pilot] and Cally were largely neglected, as were Dayna [skilled fighter] and Soolin [skilled gunslinger] in season 3 + 4.
Relatively neglected.
They still had some golden lines, still did things, but didn’t really dictate the direction of the plot.
Sarcophagus is Cally-centric, the in-story reason being that she’s a telepath and feels disconnected from the environment around her, just like the actress in the series perhaps?
Meta-fic?
If I were Tanith Lee, I would’ve written a Cally or Dayna episode too.
Would I have?
In the macho-sick 70’s?
Terry Nation wasn’t a caveman as far as I know, but now that we’ve discovered Neil Gaiman is a pervy rapist [allegedly], we have to be careful. Also, cavemen were probably less misogynistic than men in the 1970’s as the communities were smaller and they relied upon each other more to survive e.g. cavemen and cavewomen hunted together, while the elderly took care of the young. [I just made this up, makes a lot of sense though, might actually be true].
Did Terry try to fondle Tanith in a bathtub?
Would the actor playing Avon have done anything to stop it?
Could he have fondled Terry instead?
I have no idea.
I’d have to do some digging and I really can’t be bothered with that, and they’re all dead now anyway.
For now, let’s assume Blake’s 7 was a safe set.
Was Tanith on set?
I know Star Trek kept the writers hovering around so they could sleaze on the extras and 7 of 9, but in the 70’s, I’m not sure. Maybe it was just Terry Nation directing things?
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The actress who played Soolin in Season 4 was white South African, not sure how Josette Simon [Dayna] felt about that, or any of the other cast to be honest. Apartheid was not a closeted thing, even in the 70’s.
Maybe Soolin was a far left anarchist who left South Africa in disgust?
Maybe Dayna didn’t think about it much cos she wasn’t South African?
Colonialism [core + post-] can produce weird mind-states. Like the local guys in Hong Kong who idolise the British [a tiny, tiny minority, but they do exist]. And the children of Colonialism, well…it’s hard to obliterate what you’ve been created to be…unless you’re an Anarchist/have a conscience, then it’s quite easy.
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Sarcophagus starts with 2 pink-robed figures escorting a pink-veiled orb into a BBC backroom temple, possibly occult cos there’s a black triangle on the floor. Next up are some ritualistic hand gestures, glowing hand beams, and then a guy in orange-ish robes appears and magicks up a pigeon. This is all a precursor to a green-robed mime artist, who is a precursor to a red-robed martial artist, who is a precursor to the black-robed, silver-faced Druid chieftain making a recalcitrant, robed figure de-materialise – possibly the red-robed martial artist, I’m not sure – who is a precursor to the Druid chieftain placing an elaborate ring on a red-veiled body, allowing it to ascend to outer space which, from a romanticist’s perspective, is just a starry night.
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Six and a half minutes in and still no dialogue, no sign of the main cast.
I appreciate the silent ritualism.
A bit weird, redundant.
Could be weirder and more redundant.
If you’re going weird and redundant anyway, might as well commit.
But then it wouldn’t be a Blake’s 7 episode, it would be Lucifer Rising, or a slice of Jane Arden’s brain.
Don’t think Tanith was that far detached from things.
Or, from the side of experimentalism, that brave.
6 and a half minute, no dialogue occult-ish intro to a popular sci fi show?
Yes, weird to a degree, but, just like weird fiction or the new weird or other weird pretenders, weird inside a liberal framework.
A liberal sarcophagus?
Definitely not Anti-Clock.
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That feels too harsh, even when writing it.
Might be a recurring theme.
There’s something in my psyche that just…gets combative with anything endorsed by the mainstream…as in, how did it get there, why was it allowed in?
It’s a bit tedious sometimes [for both of us].
I like Blake’s 7, I like Tanith, I like the weirdness of Sarcophagus.
Where’s my place in this?
Is there one?
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Switch to the Liberator, which, if you’re not a fan of Blake’s 7, is the main ship of the series. I think it may have got blown up at some point in season 2 – series 2 in British vernac – but they replaced it or time got reversed or it never actually happened in the first place and it’s still called the Liberator.
I just checked and it’s season/series 4 where they get a new ship.
I was two fifths right.
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Cally alone in her room, planted at the side of the shot, looking mildly depressed.
The room is not filled.
A wall behind her is lit giallo green, implying loneliness.
Avon’s voice come from off-screen, outside the room, telling Cally that he door is closed.
Visuals + subtext, fantastic.
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‘Regret is a part of being alive. But keep it a small part.’
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Avon to Cally, blunt and almost compassionate.
Without the tone of being either.
Paul Darrow [Avon] was so good in this role.
Can’t dwell on him too long though cos he died a few years ago, as did Blake and Servalan and Nog and Odo and once you open that gate, you think, who’s next? Sisko? Garak? Nana Visitor?
The world you knew is sucked away slowly, and that world wasn’t a real world anyway, wasn’t even that good.
Or:
Death will devour you and finally devour me too, indifferently.
You + me being the same thing.
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Cally looks happy as despondent silhouette. Gives Jan Chappell something to do, a contradiction to filter at moments into her face-mask.
She’s still lit green, in a two-shot with Avon.
Only her, not him.
I never would’ve noticed that if I wasn’t writing this de-con-struc. It’s amazing, but also normal, the amount of thought + detail that goes into a scene, the lighting, the marks, the shot composition, the dialogue, the facial tics, the body movements, the invented habits etc.
As a piece of art, Blake’s 7 is light years beyond Trek. Even the alien shit monster episode has its merits.
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A wide shot of the Liberator bridge, each crew member doing something, alone, while also together.
Two thirds white [the couch, the main deck], one third red-orange [the central deck at the rear].
It’s probably easier if you’re reading this to go and watch the episode as you go. I found it here on Dailymotion. It buffers a bit at the start, but there aren’t that many ads.
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Vila is playing chess against Avon, who arrives [with Cally] and wins the game in one move. Seems that Vila was only alone visually. In terms of duration, he was connected to the guy who thinks about flushing him out the airlock to save his own skin in Season 4.
Alone/together.
On the brink of fucking/murdering each other.
Beautiful.
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[an alien vessel floats by, adrift]
Tarrant: Signal?
Avon: Reason?
Tarrant: It’s out there.
Avon: In other words, you’re bored.
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Always tension lines between the crew, now without Blake Zapata to provide the moral counterpoint.
Now = seasons 3 + 4, when Blake had abandoned the series.
That’s why the show is so good. Avon is borderline sociopathic, but a part of him does try to behave like Blake did, to fill the hole he left behind. Or is that Terry Nation trying to fill that hole cos a hero is expected by the audience?
I think the former, cos the effect is not jarring at all.
Avon does have a moral side to him.
It’s just been suffocated to death by the universe suffocating everyone else to death too, the one in the show, the 70’s, modern day, the entire historical past, the future, the other future, the simulation of the future etc.
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Cally sits on the couch next to Dayna but is still subdued. Most of the discussion about the alien vessel takes place in the folds around her. When they teleport to the alien ship, she perks up and takes the lead. Shoots at something that isn’t there. Steals the ring off the alien corpse [from the intro]. She’s not lit green anymore. Is decked out in muted black and grey uniform. Rescues Avon and Vila from the exploding ship. Performs the role of close friend. Chastises Avon for not trusting her, for suspecting her alien/telepathic side.
I wonder how much of this Tanith put in the script?
As a novelist, she may have included detail about the positioning of the characters and the green lighting as emotional signifier. It’s possible. It feels like her. Could also feel like Terry Nation. I don’t know either of them. Was Terry artistic? Did he understand the point of green lighting? The ritualism?
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Tarrant: I win, not just at games, at life.
Avon: You also talk too much.
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The dialogue/sparring is a little blunt here, perhaps an aspect of Tarrant’s character, perhaps ironic background to Cally’s alien possession i.e. the typical focus of the series is still there, but relegated to a distraction as Cally activates the alien artefact she nicked from the alien ship before it exploded.
Actually, it’s still quite engrossing.
So engrossing that I didn’t realise Cally had activated the device.
I read that part in the Blake’s 7 wiki.
Intentionally engrossing, as in Tanith and Terry didn’t want me to notice Cally activating the device cos if I noticed it then the others should’ve noticed it too?
But then I’m detached from the scene, outside looking in, so I should’ve noticed Cally activating the device.
Unless the outside is not actually the outside cos Cally’s a telepath and is on the outside within the inside that I have no access to?
This could be endless.
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A song plays over a shot of Cally in her quarters, with ‘Space is just a starry night’ as one of the lines.
Other episodes don’t usually do this.
Tanith is breaking through.
More ritualism, in a dream-like haze.
Cally is being taken over.
Blake’s 7 too?
By what layer of invading force?
With how much intransience?
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My notebook has run out of space so I’m gonna take a break. Maybe go to the library and look for some Tanith Lee books. Try reading the first page again, give it a real chance.
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No books of hers in the library [No Le Guin either] but I did find a site called freespeculativefiction.net that has several short stories.
I’m gonna ignore the ones published after 2000 and go for The Gorgon as it won a prize in 1984.
Sarcophagus is on pause [frozen on Cally lit green again].
May filter it in if The Gorgon disappoints, or if mood channels me that way.
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I’m disappointed.
There is no madness/sense of interiority in the first two paragraphs.
The third is insanely long, almost pure description, no real life or inventiveness to it.
I can’t stand this kind of writing.
Sorry, Tanith.
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‘A couple of roads, a tangle of sheep tracks, a precarious, escalating village, rocks and hillsides thatched by blistered grass.’
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This is better. Haven’t read ‘blistered grass’ before.
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Reached the end of the next paragraph.
Reads too much like a travelogue, a couple of occult terms, a tangle of feminist tracks, a precarious escalating fisherman-stroke-pervert etc., and told outside of Tanith herself, as if she’s refusing to commit fully to what she’s writing. Or being refused?
Maybe she knew that this is what’s acceptable in the magazines of that era, so that’s what she conditioned herself to produce.
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Six paragraphs and judgment, not good practice on my part.
I can’t help it.
Style is not an excuse.
Is it?
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I don’t only like erratic writers/narrators, but she’s not erratic enough.
Maybe that’ll leak through later?
I’ll try to read on.
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When Tanith stops describing the island, it gets better.
A bit of personality, humour, seeing swordfish when the fisherman said there was nothing, a reference to Nemean metal with the tail line of ‘sloughed from the moon herself.’
If description like this were 70-80% dominant…
Is Nemean metal made-up?
All the natural constructs are female/feminine, old and sagacious.
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The narrator is a writer, but her work is not really delineated. Just that she isn’t getting much done cos she wants to merge with the smaller island that has mesmerised her in waking life and in the dream realm too.
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‘…it was that I knew, with blind and damnable certainty…’
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Damnable?
Couldn’t get away with that now.
When is this story set?
Early 80’s?
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‘His own eyes were black, sensuous, carnal earthbound eyes, full of orthodox sins, and extremely young in a sense that had nothing to do with physical age, but with race, I suppose, the youngness of ancient things, like Pan himself, quote possibly.’
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I appreciate the decadence of this, the refusal to stop at ‘sensuous.’
The contradiction in the ‘youngness of ancient things,’ the pairing of ‘orthodox’ and ‘sins’ that implies an accepted layer of rebellion in humans [from a religious POV] and also an apathy towards it from the narrator.
Pitos the fisherman would cheat on his wife or his lover, maybe drink and gamble, but nothing beyond that, nothing out of bounds culturally, like swimming over to a small island that may or may not have a female version of Pan living on it.
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There’s a ley line [rhizome? Muon network?] running between The Gorgon and Sarcophagus, a sense of character isolation + longing for something occult-like and long dead but not dead, dormant, like Council Communism and Planet X.
I think it works better in Sarcophagus cos the characters are already there/known, and there’s an ecstatic juxtaposition between starship futurism and the pagan occult via alien performing arts ceremonies.
Ecstatic on my part cos I’m a fan of both these things.
Is it limited in Sarcophagus, by the use of Cally, her lack of previously written dimension?
A bit.
She’s also a willing receptor to the occult [at first], so there’s no revelatory layer exposed by the alien possession.
Is the alien malicious?
Fixed on mission?
Does either one call to some part of Cally’s psychic-design?
Far as I can tell, no.
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The worst of occult writing is when it lacks detail and floats off into wishy-washy dream imagery.
Tanith floats like this at times in The Gorgon.
More Nemean metal, please.
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‘He treated me once more to the primordial innocence of his stare.’
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Terrible line, way too much, ‘primordial innocence’ sounds akin to ‘bathed in moonlight’ or ‘sunbaked ruins’, a place-setter phrase until you can come up with something better.
Also, ‘treated me once more to…’
I have the feeling she didn’t know what else to write here and couldn’t be fucked to do anything about it cos mainstream sci-fi/fantasy mags would publish it as is anyway.
There are more than a few of these lazy lines throughout The Gorgon, maybe an attempt at a consistency of style, but it’s frustrating cos a lot of the other lines show that Tanith is better than that.
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Don’t wanna turn this into a rant, but my psyche does so here comes a rant, hopefully diluted by my caring side. Sci-fi/fantasy writing suffers from this kind of style greatly, THIS being a lack of standards in the language used, a lack of distinctive voice, and, worst of all for a genre like sci-fi, a lack of willingness to experiment, to do something new and insane.
There are exceptions, but look at any genre mag online, look at the ridiculously strict format guidelines, the abject sameness, the one voice that starts every story, leading you through the most basic fucking metaphor/allegory e.g. my brother’s a kudlak, and I don’t mean abject sameness, ‘abject’ would at least be exciting, jarring, disturbing, disturbed, something, but this sameness is neutered, depressing, other adjectives that make me think it’s pointless to submit to any of them. You think they’d publish any of my Trash F-Log pieces? Make room for something like The Jar or House II?
This is my ego talking.
I’ve been rejected by them so many times.
But they really are shit.
Not shit, but mediocre.
They have to be.
They are.
THEY.
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Reading this Gorgon section back, I feel like I’ve been a bit harsh on Tanith’s writing. It has its moments, many of them. There’s a ratio between your immediate feelings on the text and giving the text as a whole a fair chance. As a reader, you wouldn’t do this so much. Cos you’re not being rejected by these magazines. But then, you probably wouldn’t read the stories in the first place.
In experimental writing, giving the text a chance is crucial cos the first fifty pages could be ink blot creatures coughing up Sanskrit or an isosceles triangle going through a birth-life-death-object-revenge cycle or just blank white with YA-BOT on it.
The writing is also a lot better in the experimental sphere, a lot more jarring/confusing.
Really, the gap is quite substantial.
Why is sci-fi/fantasy so conservative in style and form?
In language?
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I’m wondering as usual if I’m being unfair to a different style of writing [sci-fi/fantasy/new weird – this last one might be too broad to really include here, Gary J Shipley’s stuff could be labelled as new weird and he’s one of the best out there], yet Soren Häxan writes similar stuff and is just simply better at it. They instill real beauty in their sentences as well as an MC who is much more precise in their desires, fears, insanities, pathologies etc.
I’ll do a de-con-struc on one of their novels at some point to prove this.
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I’ve done that rant about six times in six different pieces now.
Bored of scrawling it out.
I should just stop submitting to these places, it’s too draining.
Let them come to me.
After encountering The Jar or Death Spa or my Satanite de-con-struc.
Someone has to see those things at some point.
Or not.
To be honest
I don’t mind oblivion
to a degree
or I wouldn’t have psycho holosuite.
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I’ve just realised that ‘gorgon’ is referring to Medusa.
This is a reworked myth then.
I read that Tanith did a lot of these after she saw Angela Carter doing well with her Bloody Chamber collection, who herself was inspired by Anne Sexton’s book, Transformations. Not being negative about this, everyone has influences/nothing’s original except the original, and I’ve done reworked fairytales + myths too. Lots of scope to add new aspects, wring some pathos out of the likes of Medusa.
Or make her more alien, more occult-ish.
Is that what’s happening in The Gorgon?
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I’ve read through the whole thing and don’t have much to say, so back to Sarcophagus.
I’ll just say, the MC in The Gorgon had no real pathology, singular or plural. He was quite bland. I actually thought it was a woman for the first half of the story, a Tanith self-insert. It might still be. I use women MCs as self-inserts in several of my novels.
It was probably the part with the fisherman, the sexual cloaking. I assumed he would only be interested in women.
Is the gender reveal a twist?
Did Tanith intend the confusion?
This was written in 1982.
Maybe she did.
And cos I know it was written in 1982, I made some assumptions.
Unless ‘man’ was a typo?
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‘We could be invaded from Andromeda tomorrow, and what help for us all then?’
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A callback to Blake’s 7 season 2, the final episode?
When a bunch of vacuum cleaners and general houseware invaded from the Andromeda Galaxy?
Too precise to be arbitrary.
Is Andromeda precise?
It’s a pretty big galaxy.
Bigger than ours.
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Turns out the gorgon was inverted [spoilers].
Petrified not petrifying.
And only metaphorically a gorgon.
Not bad, better than a vacuous horror twist, but not quite enough either.
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Back to Sarcophagus [really].
The alien possessor is speaking telepathically to Cally as she lies flat on her green-lit bunk, telling her she’ll never be alone again.
No sexual element that I can see apart from ‘flat on bed.’
After reading The Gorgon, it’s obvious this is a Tanith Lee episode. The longing for something past, the ritualism [still quite vague], and now the other crew members acting like some of the occultists from the six minute intro.
Vila is the jester, performing invisible tricks, being applauded by a phantom audience [me?].
Not invisible, there’s a harpsicord, Dayna wearing a green veil.
“Your Vila-ness always brings out my sadistic streak.”
The harpsicord is floating.
It’s an hallucination, Dayna is in Cally’s quarters, about to be knocked out [I predict].
There’s a KFC ad below the vid screen.
I’m far from analysis here.
This isn’t really analysis, it’s a chain of tiny perceptions that make up a kind of reality I’m trying to crawl out of.
Blake’s 7 won’t help me.
Doing de-con-strucs of a Blake’s 7 episode won’t help me.
Anything online…is pointless.
I need to go out there again, meet real people, learn Slovene, Urdu, Portuguese, Muay Thai, write an isekai that works, stay at home, learn Slovene online, watch old Tony Jaa clips, binge Blake’s 7 all the way through again, finish this de-con-struc, see what happens/go from there.
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Dayna is knocked out by purplish-pink light.
Cally is still soaked in green.
What do these colours represent?
Green is loneliness + alienness.
Purple is Machiavellian crewmates?
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Purple is the oppositional colour, it lights up everywhere except Cally.
The alien Cally is here, she wants to absorb Cally into her own essence.
There’s a difference with The Gorgon, the occultist force is physical [kind of], a real thing, not just a metaphor.
And despotic.
She demands subservience from others towards her betterness supremacy.
Tarrant, naturally, tries to backhand her.
Typical late 70’s.
[I wasn’t born then].
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There may be no metaphor, but perhaps there is.
The alien represents an alternative ship where either Avon or Tarrant has complete dominion over everything on board.
The two of them were sparring earlier in the episode about this very same thing, who should be in control?
In seasons 1+ 2, Blake veered close to this kind of tyranny. He never quite crossed that line, but there were shades of pseudo-Communist dictators, or Communists with fascist tendencies, whatever you want to call them.
Could a leader of a crew of six be a true dictator?
I don’t know.
Maybe, if charismatic enough to win over at least two others.
But Possessed-Cally is going for pure intimidation. Serve under her or be killed by a beam of purplish-pink light.
That kind of rule never lasts [needs citation].
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Avon has arrived to outmaneuver the Possessed-Cally. She likes to talk about how they can sit at her feet and feed her synthetic grapes [with the seeds removed]. If they don’t like it, she’ll slaughter them.
But only as long as she wears the ring of power that Avon has just slipped off her finger after creating future sexual tension by kissing her.
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Now she’s a skeleton and wants to live.
Is there some pathos?
Not really, she monologued too much, issued too many threats.
Tanith probably didn’t have enough time to shade anything else onto her.
Maybe a sense of joy/ecstasy at having a physical body again [after centuries of nothingness inside the BBC vaults].
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There’s an odd look between Cally and Avon at the end, sexual tension perhaps?
Betrayal?
Something too complex to fit into one look?
It’s interesting, the idea of getting a 70’s feminist-revisionist writer in to do an episode of a sci-fi show where two men fight for control of a ship that symbolises a better future.
Theory: Terry Nation realised Cally and Dayna [and Jenna in seasons 1 + 2] had been neglected and wished to correct this.
He himself didn’t know how to write something for them [beyond appendages of the male core], or couldn’t work out a way to blend them into the main male-focused duality.
He only knew how to write the wicked, overtly sexualised enchantress i.e. Servalan, the fascist commander of the Federation.
Tanith could come in and filter her mysticism/folk horror vibe into Cally’s psionic-powers. They all have the same supernatural foundation, and it mostly works, until the last 15 minutes when Possessed-Cally resorts to generic power plays. If they could’ve stretched it out over a full season, made Cally and the alien more symbiotic…
I wonder if Tanith was happy with how the episode turned out?
In the context of the late 70’s, it’s okay.
The dialogue is fantastic too, the way the characters dig at each other with varying levels of malice, as if they really do despise each other.
Yet they don’t.
Perhaps Tarrant and Avon do, but there’s affection there, a unity of crewdom, if that’s a real phrase?
They know they’re all on a powerful ship with a drinks lounge on the bridge and relevancy within the larger scope of things. The Federation is constantly hunting them, they’re famous rebels, and none of them truly want that role. Only Blake did and he’s out of contract. Or refused to renew it for Season 3. Not exactly sure what happened there, to be honest.
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Should they have got Tanith back to do a Dayna episode?
She’s white, Dayna’s black, might not have worked so well, but then again, in the Blake’s 7 universe, racism is either not brought up or it’s buried deep in the Oort Cloud.
She could’ve done it.
There was another episode in season 4 that she wrote, this one focused on Servalan [the fascist villain]. I remember she flits between scheming, desperate, sleazy, whimsical and subservient [to the masculinity of Tarrant]. And at the end, Tarrant doesn’t let Dayna kill her, even though Servalan murdered her dad in season 3, because he fucked her when they were alone on the desert planet. But she’s a fascist and Dayna’s not. And Dayna is stunning. You can’t live on a ship for two seasons with Josette Simon and not notice that. I think Tarrant and Dayna did kiss once, while under the influence of alien drugs, but it didn’t go any further than that.
No, it’s a good thing the crew never started fucking each other. That would’ve led to bad writing. Sacrificing more pathological character aspects for love triangle hysterics.
With the female characters being reduced the most.
Terry knew what he was doing on this point.
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Just been to the library again and Space Is Just A Starry Night is there on the bottom shelf, calling to me, telling me I’ll never be alone again.
Might be a misfiring brain, but there’s a green light too.
Five of them.
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Sarcophagus is available to watch on Dailymotion, and probably other sites that don’t buffer so much.
Tanith Lee’s books and short stories should be easy enough to find, online and in the real world. I found The Gorgon here
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PsYChO hOLosUitE [zine] 