In my frantic quest to catch up with the Synchro-Watch postings, I seem to have managed to progress from 'Voice from the Past' last week to this week's 'Gambit' just as the call for 'The Keeper' goes out! At this rate I may be on the same wavelength as everybody else by next week. For now, the normal provisos apply....

Synchro-Watch - Series 2, Episode 23, 'Gambit' =================================================================

In fan lore, this is "the episode with Avon's ice-cream" and also "the one in which Jenna and Cally trail around after Blake looking decorative and not doing very much". On the other hand, it's got the reputation of being simultaneously a densely-plotted story of doublecrossing and a tour de force of daring costuming and make-up, from the days before 'camp' was acceptable on the small screen.

I have to confess, myself, that this was the first story so far in the Synchro-Watch to disappoint me; no doubt simply because I had higher expectations of it than most. Instead I was left feeling confused and rushed, without any real emotional engagement with the action. The story was apparently heavily cut in order to fit the transmission length, and it shows.

I'd say that one of the major problems with the story (and to be fair, I've seen this same point advanced in praise of its sophistication) is the way in which two plot-lines are dovetailed together without any real connection between them at all. It's a device commonly used to increase tension in fiction, both literary and televised ("I'd have one of them come out, look around, slide into a hole... they're separated, and we're off! Now I've got people I can cut between, and the adventure's started": Terry Nation) and we've seen the parallel-plot format in many other episodes already - 'Time Squad', 'Deliverance' and 'Orac', for example. It's just that the two parties are normally either converging unbeknownst ('Orac') or, more often, being delayed from supplying a much-needed rescue ('Deliverance', 'Time Squad' et al). In this one case, however, Blake's party and Avon's party never meet, never aim to meet, and have no effect whatsoever on one another's success. The 'Avon sub-plot' (or 'Blake sub-plot', depending on your point of view!) could be removed entirely without affecting the outcome of the rest of the episode in any way. To me, this felt somehow unsatisfactory.

The other main problem may be a result of over-enthusiastic cutting, or simply of an over-elaborate plot. Servalan and Krantor are so busy double-crossing one another and scheming that it is extremely difficult to work out exactly what their plans really are, even with the aid of the dim-witted sidekicks with which each has been provided in order that the plot may be explained in detail. (To be fair, Toise seems to have a good deal more intelligence and initiative them Jarriere.) This stands, to me, in poor contrast to 'Weapon', where the details of a similarly complex scheme by Carnell are made explicit without the need for an info-dump along such lines.

Let's see... with the benefit of hindsight, I think it's supposed to go like this:

Servalan bribes Krantor to deliver Docholli and Travis, asking for Docholli dead in order to rouse Krantor's suspicions as to what he knows. Krantor thus plots to question Docholli before yielding him to Servalan. He plants a bug on Travis. Servalan finds the bug and orders Jarriere in Krantor's hearing to booby-trap Travis' arm so that Docholli will be killed when he operates on it, in order that Krantor should kill Travis in an attempt to save Docholli so that he can question him on Star One. However, the booby-trap used is a fake. This is so that Docholli won't die if Travis does get to him, but Travis will die of gangrene in any case(?!) Meanwhile Servalan wants Krantor to learn the location of Star One in order to have an excuse to move Federation forces against Freedom City officially.

Does that actually make sense? And even if I have it right, is it really a sensible way for Servalan to behave? How exactly is she planning to get the location of Star One from Krantor if she lets him kill Docholli - by gunboat diplomacy? Wouldn't it be so much easier just to track down Travis, put a tracer on him herself and let him lead her to Docholli, and trump up some other excuse to conquer Freedom City out of the blue?

There ought to be a build-up of tension in the scene at the end, where Docholli is opening up the booby-trapped arm - the audience ought to be worried that Blake, Travis and Docholli are all going to go sky-high together. (And after Cevedic's warning, why doesn't Travis say anything to alert the cyber-surgeon? Is the idea that he is actually hoping to catch Blake in the explosion? If so, at least some indication of this should have been made - a mocking invitation "Come here, Blake, take a close look" perhaps.) Instead, the scene is totally thrown away, in what amounts to little more than an eye-blink: 'Oh look, Travis, there's a dud bomb in your arm, fancy that.' The whole grenade business thus appears to serve no purpose at all - it was only when trying to work out the above 'plot' summary that it dawned on me that it was all an elaborate charade whose intent was achieved as soon as Krantor overheard Servalan's words. So why bother with a real bomb at all? Why not just disconnect the arm?

More and more questions pile up, you see - and this goes on throughout the whole episode. A plot is unnecessarily complicated when it leaves the audience wondering alternately what is going on and what is the point!

Another point that strains the boundaries of credibility is Orac's magic shrinking act. I liked the unobtrusive way in which it is established that this process takes energy to maintain and that the duration is inversely proportional to the reduction, thus explaining without fuss why Orac is never seen to do this again - but it doesn't make a lot of sense that Orac could do it in the first place!

He is a computer whose speciality is obtaining data - he can draw on the accumulated databanks of the galaxy, giving access to almost unlimited knowledge - and we have seen ('Shadow') that he can electrify his casing. That makes sense - he presumably contains some kind of power source and can reroute power within himself as necessary. However, everything else he achieves (e.g. control of Liberator's systems) is by manipulating outside computers; he has no known ability to manipulate matter at all. While I am certain that he has full knowledge of the theory of 'stabilised atomic implosion', and could identify and operate a machine designed to put this theory into application if they had come across one, I find it highly 'out of character' that he can magically shrink himself. Would it really have been so difficult for Avon (or the scriptwriter!) to think of some way in which a full-size Orac could have been disguised and smuggled into the casino? After all, other computers seen in the series are far larger, and Servalan's troopers in 'Terminal' fail to identify an undisguised Orac...

Things I noticed and liked about the style in 'Gambit' - the ongoing sequence of various shots in which we don't see the protagonist directly, whether reflected in a mirror as he speaks (Krantor), fighting as a shadow on the wall (Travis), or monitored over a remote camera (Vila, Servalan). The 'forward reference' to chess in our first shot of Vila, establishing at least a modicum of ability (one would never have taken Vila for a chess-player on his intellectual record so far... but then I suppose Avon, the more obvious choice, would hardly have allowed himself to get 'suckered' into a Speed Chess match.) The surprise opening to the episode, featuring not one of the usual Liberator locations but a dialogue between two unknown and very un-space-age type characters in a very down to earth bar - disconcerting, almost as if one had strayed into an episode of 'Eastenders'... and then Travis steps in, as the hero of the day. Even according to his own description.

Like 'Trial', this is an episode in which Travis is sinned against rather than sinning. He is being used by Servalan, who makes no bones about admitting to her aide (no doubt in a veiled threat as to his own possible fate) that she is planning to dispose of Travis because he is no longer of any service to her. He saves Docholli's life twice in the course of the episode, from Zee and then from Cevedic and his men, and we learn that he saved it previously on the stricken 'Bari'. He makes no real attempt to kill Blake - indeed, he invites Blake to kill him, though it's not at all clear why, other than a general feeling of failure - and strangely enough Blake doesn't seem at all surprised to see his old nemesis emerging from the bar when he has been waiting for Docholli. One assumes he does recognise Travis wrapped up in that cloak..?

Again, as for the previous episode, timing for Travis' activities seems out. Going by what Blake and Servalan say, Docholli and Travis respectively appear to have been on Freedom City for some weeks, and before then they both presumably joined the Bari at the far end of her run, on some other planet. It seems unlikely unless by enormous coincidence that this was Atlay, where we last saw Travis in custody... so between this episode and its predecessor he must have escaped, got on Docholli's trail, tracked him down to another planet, embarked on the same liner, contrived to rescue him in a convenient disaster (it's tempting, as fan fiction posits, to assume that Travis sabotaged the Bari's secondary burner, knowing that Docholli would then have to respond to a 'Doctor on board' emergency call) and then spent several weeks as his bodyguard, waiting for Blake to catch up. It's not as entirely unlikely as managing to become a trusted member of a six years old conspiracy 'between episodes', but it does suggest a considerable lapse of time.

The other 'Travis questions', of course, are how he gets his arm mended after Docholli leaves, why he snatches it away and doesn't let Docholli finish the operation in the first place (this adds substance to the theory that he was hoping for the grenade to be set off so that he could kill Blake in the detonation), and why he ever teams up with Servalan again, or vice versa. Presumably the answer to this last question is that they are both pragmatic and ruthless enough to use any tool that comes to hand without trusting each other again one inch!

Minor points:

How does Travis know that Blake is hunting Docholli? Blake first learned of Star One's existence in 'Countdown', only two episodes ago, and didn't mention it or Docholli to the fake 'Shivan' in the last episode. On the other hand, Travis does know that Blake is hunting Central Control, and he knows of Docholli's existence (he tells Servalan he saw him two years ago, but the cybersurgeon fled after operations on those who built Star One, and Central Control was moved to Star One thirty years ago, so Docholli must have been on the run when they met). Note that Docholli didn't recognise Travis - so their previous encounter was obviously a fairly brief one.

Why does Chenie refer to Travis' "one yellow eye"? If this is a quotation I don't recognise it - and it's clearly not meant as a literal description, since in the next shot we get a good view of his single, blue eye! Green eyes refer to jealousy, but I'm not aware of any particular connotation relating to yellow eyes.

I notice that Travis is using a gun in his right hand rather than the built-in laser in his left, even before the latter is damaged. He shoots Zee with it, for example. Is this because the 'lazeron destroyer' is always lethal, and he needs an option not to kill? Or is it just to provide him with an excuse to have a weapon to kill Cevedic with later on?

I was somewhat puzzled by Krantor's description of the Klute's first challenger as 'A trekker, as you can see'. I would picture a trekker's normal outfit as more along the lines of Docholli's battered leathers and ancient hat - do they customarily dress in wig and ruffles a la Louis XIV, then? Or was it just his vacuous expression to which Krantor was making a malicious allusion?

This is Servalan's first (and I think only, with the possible exception of 'Harvest of Kairos') appearance in colour - a bright scarlet gown which like many of her costumes was rather more attractive from the front than the rear (though I admired the skill with which she ascended gracefully onto items of furniture while wearing a skirt that all but hobbled her - no-one would ever catch the Supreme Commander flashing thigh while emerging from a sports car!). Incidentally, in the opening interview with Krantor, while he takes a grasp on her hand, one can observe that not only are his fingernails (silver) longer than hers (red) but so are his false eyelashes!

The electrocution in the Speed Chess chair must have been powerful indeed, in order not to leave a body of any kind. I was expecting the victim to remain drooping in the chair, with a few wisps of smoke - but I suppose that would have been too realistic for pre-watershed transmission. (At least "Blake's 7" never took the "Star Trek" route of having ray-guns that hygienically vaporise the enemy - the Liberator guns are allowed to leave visible corpses!)

The white cat that Krantor keeps stroking is presumably a James Bond reference. Ernst Blofeld has a multitude of villainous cliches to answer for...

I noticed a general 'French' influence to Freedom City and its inhabitants which goes beyond the elderly 'ringmaster' and her preposterous French accent. All the locals use a Frenchified pronunciation of the Supreme Commander's name, for example, "Sairvelon", which makes foreigners like Docholli stand out. Most of the costumes appear to date from various periods of French history, from the 17th century coat and ruffles of the unlucky trekker Thrilse via the Catholic nuns to the Moulin Rouge outfit into which Chenie squeezes. Krantor refers to 'Mardi Gras', and even his and Toise's costumes appear more ancien regime than Regency (that headdress was never English!). Of course, Paris led all the fashions in the time of the Prince Regent...

Finally, that fan lore: I'm sorry, but the 'ice-cream' looked much more like fruit salad to me - distinctly colourful and chunky! Also, I didn't feel that Cally and Jenna were particularly under-used, given the short amount of screen-time devoted to their segment of story as opposed to Travis' or Vila's. Admittedly they don't do much, but then Blake achieves at least as little, if not less.

On the whole, I just feel that 'Gambit' is too complicated. Krantor's and Servalan's first interview is the best, with the remainder being devoted to the demands of an over-compressed plot rather than to character and background. The Chenie/Docholli segment is well-handled, with Chenie being a rare example of a sympathetic character who actually survives reasonably happily to the end of the episode! Avon and Vila's segment lacks tension, as does Blake's, and suffers in this respect from being cut up among other demands for Krantor's attention. This is a good episode for Travis fans, character-wise, but his part of the plot is confusing to say the least, and it is never made clear just how genuine his protective relationship towards Docholli has been.

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