I just can't follow what is happening with Lucas/John in this episode but at one point he looked just as confused as the rest of us viewers. Have to say though that Beth is some focused agent as she fails to spot a man run right past her with a steak knife in his thigh - the same man she saw talking with Lucas!! And then he still managed to run all over London with that knife.....maybe people were just too polite to mention to him that he seemed to have brought a little too attached to his cutlery drawer!

Ruth's scenes were the ones that made my jaw fall. Apart from the flinching I did when she used the iron to free her hands, the way she just lost it in the kitchen was very powerful. You can see the dark, tougher side to Ruth coming on since 9.1 (and probably even in S8 when she returned) and I suppose it was quite believable that she reached that crisis point that day. The poor council man did manage to shoot him in the neck (I think) then the chest, so when she went 'Dirty Harry' on him that was more than was needed, but I think she just had so much pent up anger and rage and panic that she needed to keep shooting. Her face afterwards was so interesting - she looked horrified (I thought) at one point then when she saw Harry it was almost defiant as if she was saying 'see I can do this'.

I'm feeling so bad for her that she realises that she is dead inside and that she is far from the person she was in those earlier years. It is inevitable but she feels such horror at herself, and probably Harry too that she was unlikely to want any comfort at the hospital. Perhaps she thinks she;s not the same person that Harry fell in love with and that they shouldn't even try to comfort eachother.

Whatever she feels in 9.7- I hope she manages to regain a different perspective in 9.8 and not allow herself to be completely dead inside when it comes to her feelings.

Apologies if this was already dealt with in pages 13 to 25:
How is a bombing in Dakar on Harry's "watch"? Wouldn't that be more a 6 thing?

(07-11-2010 05:06 PM)femaleBertieWooster Wrote:  Is there anyone who doesn't think we are going to have a Kurosawa-type third point of view for the Dakar scenes which will show the truth and resolve all? The only thing I can't get a handle on is who's point of view we're going to get. Best guess as of now

Spoiler: show

Harry or Maya (the MI 5 agent)

As always, I reserve the right to change my mind starting 5 minutes from now.

Ha! This made me smile. I know exactly what you mean about reserving the right to change your mind. I have absolutely lost count of the number of times I have packaged up a neat little conclusion only to abandon it within hours!! The mistake I am making, of course, is to try to make my conclusion neat

I can't help thinking you have homed in on the most sensible (and likely) device to get us all out of this mess. Some combination of divergent perspective and a facet of the lesson learned by Beth in 9.3 about "how the real world works" would allow a good exploration of the narrative tangle in which we find ourselves, and about which so many of us have expressed varying degrees of concern / confusion.

I am genuinely looking forward to being proved wrong in my criticism of this storyline as lazy writing. It's not actually that I believe the writing this season to be bad. Rather, I find that this season has proved the most frustrating in its seeming lack of ambiguity, and a correlated lack of depth and texture... so far. By 10:00pm tomorrow, I will - I hope - be shown to have been magnificently wrong about this. Hurrah!

I've just noticed two irritating things about this episode; sorry if they've been spotted before. When Ruth's Nokia phone is ringing at Deery's, and she's in the middle of screaming / shooting / shouting:

1 - Her phone is actually switched to silent and yet is ringing.
2 - Her phone network is 'Tesco'. I find it hard to believe that MI5 would sign up to Tesco as their mobile comms provider.

(08-11-2010 12:09 AM)KiKi Wrote:  I've just noticed two irritating things about this episode; sorry if they've been spotted before. When Ruth's Nokia phone is ringing at Deery's, and she's in the middle of screaming / shooting / shouting:

1 - Her phone is actually switched to silent and yet is ringing.
2 - Her phone network is 'Tesco'. I find it hard to believe that MI5 would sign up to Tesco as their mobile comms provider.

Haha! That made me laugh.

Funny you should point that out though. They seem to have had a bit of a problem with Mobile Phones this episode.

Re the Lucas and Chinese connection. I think at the end of E4 Not sure if that is because he is the path to Albany or for something else?

Re Lucas
I am hoping that when Lucas knows what the file is he will do the right thing and Harry and Ruth will be saved. (To have a few months off to travel Europe together !)

(08-11-2010 10:32 AM)harrbd Wrote:  Re the Lucas and Chinese connection. I think at the end of E4

Series 9 Spoiler: show

the Chinese say something to the effect that the real purpose of them being in England was something else and they showed a photo of Lucas.

Not sure if that is because he is the path to Albany or for something else?

Re Lucas

Series 9 Spoiler: show

downloading the Albany file or link to the wherabouts. Surely if it is what they say it is Lucas wouldn't expect to be able to download it that easily. I don't think he knows what it is. Wouldn't the guy he set up (who had access to the file !) say that Lucas had asked him for access in order to try to clear his name ?

I am hoping that when Lucas knows what the file is he will do the right thing and Harry and Ruth will be saved. (To have a few months off to travel Europe together !)

Hi guys
I´m new here and I just have to say that after watching ep. 7, I guess Lucas North is the one leaving the show. He has to die, it will be the only way out for a toutured mind like his and let´s face it, he is a bad guy trying to mend the bad things he´s done but who´s going to forgive him? Harry? MI5? Us?

I´m really sorry to see RA leaving Spooks but Lucas/ John is not to be trusted anymore. We wouldn´t like him around even for the shower scene ;-)
Well, that maybe...
No future for Lucas/John
As for RA future, I was hoping to see him on Strike Back again, he was good at it and Porter is a better character than dark Lucas, shame about The Hobbit filming schedule.

Harry Pearce cannot leave. The grid won´t be the same without him.
Well that´s what I think. Sorry about my english, trying to improve it thanks to BBC series!

Perhaps the series will end with either Harry or Ruth badly injured,( possibly mortally) - and at last declaring their love for each other above all else.
Whatever, it will all be left up in the air, no doubt

I really just hope that everyone comes out of this okay!!

I'm pretty worried now as I heard a review of tonight's episode on the radio earlier and they said there's a twist at the end they never saw coming, which really suprised them. So my biggest fear is that Ruth's going to be involved in this afterall, for instance linked with the Chinese people who seem to be controlling the Vaughn/John/Lucas storyline (sorry if this is vague but I don't pretend to have a firm grasp on the Albany plot!) For instance, could it be that Ruth turns a gun on Harry at the end, or even on herself? Afterall, she's not been herself lately, and it emerged she spoke Mandarin in E3 I think it was. Why/when would she have learnt Chinese? Perhaps Harry gets killed at the end of E10 and this is the last series? I really hope none of this turns out to be true, hopefully I've just been falsely 'spooked' by this radio review I heard...