Plot-holes

[binkie]

Not all of these are plot holes exactly. They are, though, all questions arising from, or motivated by, the sudden gear change of season 9. I accept the necessity for a certain amount of hand waving in the case of a heightened-reality narrative like Spooks. However, narrative discrepancy and logical disconnect are nobody’s friend. This is especially true of a retcon. If you’re going to re-tell your story, re-tell it in a way that suggests you were telling it this way from the start.

Dakar

The bombing of the British embassy in Dakar, we are told in explicit terms, is something about which Harry has felt, and continues to feel, anger and frustration. It happened “on his watch”, and was so fiendishly well-devised and well-executed, the culprit continues to elude the massed ranks of British intelligence and law enforcement. Still, we are apparently to conclude that never once, in the fifteen years since the bombing, has Harry (who has certainly had a habit of taking confidential files with him out of the office) so much as glanced at the file maintained by his own agency in relation to this incident. Or perhaps he has glanced often at the file, and it simply has not struck him as in the least bit odd that the Lucas North of gym membership renown is not the Lucas North of little more than ten feet away.

During the establishing scene at the riverside in 9.7, we learn that Harry is, apparently genuinely, oblivious to the fact that Lucas(-is-John) was in Dakar at the time of the bombing. Are we to suppose, then, that Lucas-really-Lucas arrived in Dakar by rowing boat or hang glider, never bothering with passport control, and failing to declare his visit in the application form which so wowed MI5 recruitment that they never bothered to contact him, or vet him further than his own say-so, until the last minute interview which would seal the deal?

If Lucas-really-Lucas is in the MI5 Dakar bombing file based on something as ephemeral as his membership of a local gym, why is (Lucas-is-)John not also in the file based on the fact of his encounter with local law enforcement (confiscation of passport, etc.)?

Did Lucas-really-Lucas and Lucas-is-John have no family or friends with sufficient investment in their wellbeing that their disappearance from the vicinity of a terrorist bombsite motivated a total lack of police interest of any kind?

Vaughan

Does Vaughan maintain a lock-up somewhere, stocked with the former possessions of people he thinks he might encounter more than once?

How long ago did the Chinese approach Vaughan in pursuit of Albany? He has, apparently, had sufficient time to establish the whereabouts of Lucas-is-John and to embark on a relationship with the woman who was the object of Lucas-is-John’s affections 15 years ago. The relationship is of enough value to Vaughan that the Chinese are able to use it as leverage against him in cranking up the Albany timetable. His behaviour towards Maya seems genuinely protective and emotionally vulnerable, particularly in the car and again at the warehouse in 9.7. We are not, it seems, looking at a relationship in its early days. Nevertheless, the Chinese suddenly decide they simply cannot wait a moment longer for a file with no use-by-date. Why? Why must they have Albany now, now, now? Why not six months ago; or six months hence?

What was the point of the pseudo-stroke act? The ‘explanation’ that it was an attempt to elicit some sympathy from someone he evidently and explicitly characterises as being utterly without the capacity for such a thing is the worst kind of because-it-said-so-in-the-script storytelling. Vaughan has to know this was a waste of time and effort because he has to know Lucas-is-John has essentially the same character he had in Dakar. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be open to manipulation by briefcase, and Vaughan would not have bothered to bring the briefcase.

Maya

I really cannot bring myself to comment over much, even in a thread dedicated to plot holes, on a character whose stated aim while at university STUDYING MEDICINE was to open a tapas bar. Just... I don’t even know what to do with that piece of information, or the quality of the writing that put it on the page for poor Laila Rouass to say.

Albany

Albany wouldn’t work. The Chinese should not need to have gone to the lengths they did to obtain it before discovering this for themselves. A cursory look at any basic genetics text would have told them Albany wouldn’t work. There is no basis in DNA for a nerve agent to act in the way Albany purports to do in relation to race-based genetic differences. A nerve agent is a nerve agent is a nerve agent. It will work on all complex organisms – human or other animal – or it will work on none. If any of the Spooks should have realised Albany was a bust, it should have been Ruth. Instead, she (the character, not the actress) responds to Harry’s description of Albany in the manner of a chicken with its head cut off, and starts invoking meaningless and irrelevant examples of recent civil wars, as though there is any difference between a Serb and a Croat at the level of DNA. Annoying hole in script credibility is annoying.

That was a pretty spiffy user interface on the creaky Albany file. Not to mention the pretty spiffy laptop on which it was stored.


Yeah... I have more questions, but these are currently being held ransom to my loss of will in articulating them. Lucas questions are in a separate list which I will post when I have finished the list! This thread was a terrific idea. But it makes me sad that it was necessary, and that there is so much material to add to it.

[HellsBells]

Excellent post binkie!
All are very valuable points. The fact Albany could never be real I think you perhaps have to allow, there have been a few 'big' scenarios in Spooks that would never work in the real world.

Never understood the thing with Vaughn pretending to have a stroke.

What was the point of that picture/painting in the Albany file in MI5's archive? And did that same file tell the Chinese that Malcolm had the genuine file, why? Why didn't Lucas read that file before handing it over to Vaughn?

[binkie]

(24-01-2011 01:23 PM)HellsBells Wrote:  The fact Albany could never be real I think you perhaps have to allow, there have been a few 'big' scenarios in Spooks that would never work in the real world.

Ha ha ha! You are far too lenient and lovely

The Albany thing annoyed me because it is so obviously unworkable. The fact that we are asked to believe that the British government spent years researching and trialing the thing AND that the Chinese government committed so much money and manpower to its capture AND that Ruth reacted to news of its (alleged) properties in the way she did AND that Harry went so out of his way to secure it, when it could never work and would never have made it out of a laborartory discussion session, extend the prospect of too many suspensions of disbelief for me to be able to swallow this one. If the script wanted to hang the outcome of the Albany crisis on a question of jeopardy for humanity at large, why not work up an idea which represents actual jeopardy? It's not as if there are not enough real examples of human ingenuity taking this rather unfortunate turn.

Somewhat bizzarely, I will allow the cars and the medical equipment and the fantastic array of portable IT equipment on the basis that the Chinese secret service helped out there. But the too-obviously compromised premise of Albany is not getting past my radar!

[LINDA]

What I don`t understand is would`t Lucas /John get rid of any photos in the files when he joinsd MI5
to cover his tracks.It did not take Beth long to find the real picture of Lucas North.Why did he not just kill Vaughan.

[Byatil]

(24-01-2011 05:15 PM)LINDA Wrote:  What I don`t understand is would`t Lucas /John get rid of any photos in the files when he joinsd MI5
to cover his tracks.It did not take Beth long to find the real picture of Lucas North.Why did he not just kill Vaughan.

No idea as to why he wouldn't have deleted the files other than that he wouldn't have had high enough security-clearance.

I'm assuming he didn't kill Vaughn sooner because of the psychological hold he had over John/Lucas; supposedly Vaughn has a lot of power over him (think Dasharvin in 8.4) and John/Lucas simply couldn't go through with killing him until he had "nothing left to lose". In S9, he obviously has Maya to think about, which is the reason he isn't able to get rid of Vaughn after he reveals his position in regards to her.

[binkie]

[Sigh] So here are some Lucas-is-his-own-plot-hole questions, and even an attempt to resolve some of them. The key word there, obviously, being ‘attempt’. It is getting to the point now where my greatest concern is that the fabled ‘Downfall of Lucas North’ feature on the season 9 DVD is going to establish that Lucas-is-John really was the intention for the character from the start. Given how incoherently it was done, I’m not sure if this is a better thing than the unsuccessful retcon we have generally assumed season 9 to be in respect of this character. Either way, it was an operational failure, and all these questions apply whether Lucas-is-John was a plan or a convenient get-out.

1 – Why did Lucas-is-John not kill Vaughan, as well as Lucas-really-Lucas, in Dakar? If he was opportunistic enough to kill his friend for a passport, he was ruthless enough to realise the foolhardiness of leaving a witness to his every crime.

2 – Does Lucas-is-John really believe that “I was so careful” extends to online and telephone research into the whereabouts of the mother of a former MI5 officer using government secure equipment in a government office? I have, in the recent past, worked for a judicial office of government. Keystrokes were logged, ‘phone calls were monitored, e-mails were filtered through GSI, URLs outside the .gov.uk domain were flagged. I am hardly crouching librarian, hidden traitor, but even I have a better understanding of the concept of ‘careful’ in secreting blatantly illegal activity... in the workplace!!

3 – If we are to conclude, as season 9 wishes us to do, that the reason for Lucas-is-John’s lack of personal effects is he was consciously and intentionally distancing himself from any statement of personality (since he didn’t really have one; or, the one he was using wasn’t really his, and he didn’t know how to express it), what are we to make of the quite plainly personal possessions shown in 7.2? Why does Lucas have a life in a box, but Lucas-is-John has only anonymous interior design kit?

4 – Staying on the ‘consciously and intentionally’ theme: seriously, writers, I mean...seriously, how did Lucas/John work? Is Lucas a performance given consciously by John? Is Lucas a discrete, spontaneously arising, persona, operating independently of John with no knowledge of him and no means of communicating with him? Is Lucas a forgotten survival mechanism, created and controlled by John as a means of keeping himself invisible? Leaving an audience guessing succeeds only up to a point. In the case of a plot development which so radically and completely impacts on literally everything your audience (thinks it) knows in a particular context, some demonstration of function is required. Without it, the discussion of the plot development will – as this very thread illustrates - relate only to the rendition, and not to the reveal.

5 – “I know every inch of your mind”. I have tried to make this mean that Oleg know about Lucas-is-John, but the Russia storyline is rendered a nonsense if this is indeed what we are to accept. I will allow that, if Oleg did know that Lucas-is-John, this would be an extremely valuable piece of information to hold over a former intelligence captive, and that such knowledge would create an extra dimension of vulnerability for the sake of manipulation in what is shown clearly to be an exceptionally complex relationship in its multi-dimensional co-dependency. But the logic of retrospective interpretation is too brittle in too many little ways to bear scrutiny in the terms set out by the narrative, even if it was intended from the outset that Lucas-is-John. As Belle says:

(21-01-2011 09:40 AM)Belle Wrote:  What was the point of sacrificing 8 years of his life, if Lucas wasn't Lucas in the first place?

The punishment-for-some-other-crime defence offered in 9.7 is so utterly dependent upon a clear and consistent narrative pronouncement on the operational quality of Lucas/John that the lack of such a pronouncement - coupled with the pick-and-mix quality of what pronouncement is made - undercuts any attempt to make sense of the Russia element of Lucas’ function in the overall Spooks narrative.

6 – In a related note: if Lucas-is-John is content to endure his treatment in prison as deferred and deserved punishment for Dakar, why does such a crucial element of his human character, almost from the moment we meet him in 7.1, arise from the fracturing of his relationship with Harry, whom he holds almost entirely responsible for the length of his confinement?

7 – While Lucas-really-Lucas presumably, in his awesome and trailblazing application to join MI5, demonstrated ample and impressive aptitude for the job, from where did the ability of Lucas-is-John to fulfil this expectation come? Being able to give appropriate, borrowed answers in an interview setting (of, it has to be said, apparently questionable value) is hardly the same as being able to demonstrate qualities that arise from a morally alien mindset. Lucas-is-John is entirely amoral, acting as a terrorist for the gratification of his ego and killing his friend for the sake of a passport. Lucas, as we see him in seasons 7/8 – and as Harry and Malcolm evidently have seen him before he went to Moscow – is a highly principled, morally courageous man, who struggles to reconcile the conflict of normative morality with the demands of the compromised other-moral nature required of his employment. If Lucas-is-John is a “monster who fell asleep and dreamed he was a hero”, how does normative morality play such a defining, automatic, part in his character? Lucas-is-John would be aware of – and, almost certainly, indifferent to – descriptive morality, but he would have no real appreciation of normative values. He would have found it impossible to be Lucas North, as he was represented in his application. He might have talked like him, but he would have been incapable of thinking like him.

8 – Speaking of aptitude: Lucas-really-Lucas showed extraordinarily lax judgment in his decision to spend his time just prior to an interview with the secret service hanging out in a far-from-friendly or politically-stable nation, and getting high with someone he had known for five minutes on the basis that both men were British and had nothing better to do with their time. How much of a loss to the service are we to take his untimely death to be? And can I just say at this point: I am in no way blaming Lucas-really-Lucas for his own death, or suggesting, in a moment of immoral insanity, that he had it coming

I think this is a sign that I should stop now!

[Byatil]

(25-01-2011 12:27 AM)binkie Wrote:  [Sigh] So here are some Lucas-is-his-own-plot-hole questions, and even an attempt to resolve some of them. The key word there, obviously, being ‘attempt’. It is getting to the point now where my greatest concern is that the fabled ‘Downfall of Lucas North’ feature on the season 9 DVD is going to establish that Lucas-is-John really was the intention for the character from the start. Given how incoherently it was done, I’m not sure if this is a better thing than the unsuccessful retcon we have generally assumed season 9 to be in respect of this character. Either way, it was an operational failure, and all these questions apply whether Lucas-is-John was a plan or a convenient get-out.

I seriously hope they don't try and tell us the whole Lucas-is-John plot was intentional I will forever lose my faith in the writers if they do. It's just absurd to think that the S7 writers would have taken Lucas' character in such a direction, but I digress.

(25-01-2011 12:27 AM)binkie Wrote:  1 – Why did Lucas-is-John not kill Vaughan, as well as Lucas-really-Lucas, in Dakar? If he was opportunistic enough to kill his friend for a passport, he was ruthless enough to realise the foolhardiness of leaving a witness to his every crime.

The only explanation I can come up with for this one is that Lucas-is-John was too scared to go through with it. I'm assuming Vaughn was someone he grew to admire and look-up-to; a father-figure, so to speak. Vaughn was the one calling all the shots in their relationship - he had total control. Lucas-is-John killed Lucas-really-Lucas because Vaughn suggested he should, did he not? Vaughn handed Lucas-is-John the suitcase that was to blow up the embassy with Lucas-is-John thinking that he could trust him. Once Lucas-is-John had murdered Lucas-really-Lucas, it might seem totally illogical to him to then go on to kill the man who he thinks is helping him. This is the crucial element, I feel. Lucas-is-John still believes Vaughn to be a 'good' person at this point, ultimately someone who is helping him out of a sticky-situation. Of course, once Lucas-is-John has reinvented himself on his return to England, Vaughn apparently (conveniently) disappears for 15 years. This explanation does require the suspension of any form of morality in the face of fear on Lucas-is-John's part, but it's the only rational explanation I can formulate!

(25-01-2011 12:27 AM)binkie Wrote:  2 – Does Lucas-is-John really believe that “I was so careful” extends to online and telephone research into the whereabouts of the mother of a former MI5 officer using government secure equipment in a government office? I have, in the recent past, worked for a judicial office of government. Keystrokes were logged, ‘phone calls were monitored, e-mails were filtered through GSI, URLs outside the .gov.uk domain were flagged. I am hardly crouching librarian, hidden traitor, but even I have a better understanding of the concept of ‘careful’ in secreting blatantly illegal activity... in the workplace!!

"Crouching librarian, hidden traitor" xD!

I think in order to make this believable we're expected to think that MI5 have extremely lax security standards... there really is no logical explanation for the way Lucas-is-John managed to land a job with MI5, or as to how he managed to completely cover-up the murder of Lucas-really-Lucas.

(25-01-2011 12:27 AM)binkie Wrote:  3 – If we are to conclude, as season 9 wishes us to do, that the reason for Lucas-is-John’s lack of personal effects is he was consciously and intentionally distancing himself from any statement of personality (since he didn’t really have one; or, the one he was using wasn’t really his, and he didn’t know how to express it), what are we to make of the quite plainly personal possessions shown in 7.2? Why does Lucas have a life in a box, but Lucas-is-John has only anonymous interior design kit?

Once again... something I can't make any sense of. Lucas' obsessions with figures such as Blake are focussed on throughout S7 and 8, yet we are expected to believe that these interests and beliefs are either a lie, or have been adapted from another man...? I don't think you can really 'adapt' to someone else's morality, no matter how terrible your psychological trauma. If we are to believe that Lucas-is-John would have been forced to base his personality on Lucas-really-Lucas, then it seems that Lucas-is-John didn't actually have any interest in the things he thought he was interested in at all. Essentially, we are expected to believe that Lucas-is-John is unaware of the fact that his beliefs are not his own. Which hardly makes sense, because surely, at the point where he accepted another man's beliefs (even as a coping mechanism), they essentially became his own? Yet he lived his life the way "Lucas would have wanted to", so it seems Lucas-is-John was aware that his beliefs were not his own. So then, why force himself through torture and interrogation for 8 years under the pretence that it was 'Harry's fault', even though Lucas-is-John should feel no anger towards Harry seeing as he admits the torture to be some form of "personal punishment" for murdering Lucas-really-Lucas? Was his doubt over Harry's trust (and therefore his relationship with Katchimov) completely manufactured to create a more believable "Lucas North" by Lucas-is-John?

I think I'll try and address some of the other points tomorrow, even though some of them seem beyond redemption and only seem to raise more questions! I seriously hope BBC/Kudos researchers come across this forum at some point

[binkie]

(25-01-2011 01:18 AM)Byatil Wrote:  Lucas-is-John killed Lucas-really-Lucas because Vaughn suggested he should, did he not? Vaughn handed Lucas-is-John the suitcase that was to blow up the embassy with Lucas-is-John thinking that he could trust him.

A fair recollection, but true only in the version of events told to Harry. Vaughan reminds / informs Lucas-is-John that it was, in fact, his own idea to off Lucas-really-Lucas AND that he knew full well the purpose of the package he carried into the embassy. As for being under the impression of being helped, I'd think someone as feckless and self-serving as Lucas-is-John wouldn't really be that fussed about the quality of his relationship with Vaughan, so long as there is a chance that Vaughan might change his mind about helping. Lucas-is-John is all about threats and opportunities. Once Vaughan witnesses the murder of Lucas-really-Lucas, he becomes a threat. Realistically, Lucas-is-John would not have left alive anyone who could identify him as not-Lucas.

---

Wait! My tiny brain has stumbled upon a more accurate memory... In the version of events Lucas tells to Harry, doesn't he claim it was Vaughan who killed Lucas-really-Lucas? Vaughan, in reminding Lucas-is-John what a bad man he really was/is has that moment of amused resignation in the delirium of near-death, when he says, in response to Lucas-is-John's declaration that he has told Harry everything about what happened in Dakar: "You told him it was me."

[Byatil]

(25-01-2011 01:39 AM)binkie Wrote:  

(25-01-2011 01:18 AM)Byatil Wrote:  Lucas-is-John killed Lucas-really-Lucas because Vaughn suggested he should, did he not? Vaughn handed Lucas-is-John the suitcase that was to blow up the embassy with Lucas-is-John thinking that he could trust him.

A fair recollection, but true only in the version of events told to Harry. Vaughan reminds / informs Lucas-is-John that it was, in fact, his own idea to off Lucas-really-Lucas AND that he knew full well the purpose of the package he carried into the embassy. As for being under the impression of being helped, I'd think someone as feckless and self-serving as Lucas-is-John wouldn't really be that fussed about the quality of his relationship with Vaughan, so long as there is a chance that Vaughan might change his mind about helping. Lucas-is-John is all about threats and opportunities. Once Vaughan witnesses the murder of Lucas-really-Lucas, he becomes a threat. Realistically, Lucas-is-John would not have left alive anyone who could identify him as not-Lucas.

Completely playing the role of the devils advocate here

There's always the possibility that Lucas-is-John was simply too scared to do anything to Vaughn. We're supposed to believe him to be the naive University student who has become caught-up in a drug-trafficking scheme, so it doesn't seem implausible that he wouldn't be the most confident of people at age 19/20.

As we've seen with Lucas' character (not sure if it really 'counts' in the context of S9, but onwards nevertheless) he's obsessed with the idea of controlling his surroundings. Vaughn represents a threat, as you say, in that he cannot be controlled. But as we've seen with Dasharvin in 8.4, Lucas is extremely scared when he loses control of a situation. Could it be said that the same thing happened in regards to his relationship with Vaughn? Lucas realised he had no control over Vaughn and panicked, fleeing Dakar and presumably hoping to bury his head in the sand over the whole ordeal. It could even be argued that he learnt from this experience, and that it was in fact the reason as to why Lucas has such a compulsion to control (once again completely disregarding the fact that it was apparently Russia that affected his personality in S7+8).

[BravoNine]

My brain is hurting from all this Lucas-is-really-Lucas and Lucas-is-John LOL! It's like watching a tennis match! It's harming my brain cells!

However, I think I have found a perfect analogy for Lucas-is-John's little situation.....just imagine an ostrich burying its head in the sand or better yet, think of a baby who covers his eyes and thinks that just because he can't others that means others can't see him....

Someone really needs to teach Lucas-is-John the very simple concept of stop burying your head in the sand, just because he's ignoring this mess every happened doesn't mean no one else is noticing.

Yes I did it, I just compared Lucas North to a baby and an ostrich. I think it suits him!

----------------

And honestly, I refuse to believe that MI5 security was that bad! How can I believe that not a single person saw a picture of the real Lucas North???????!?!??!?!? How can I believe that not even one person might have noticed that Lucas-is-John is not the real Lucas North?

I swallowed a lot of things watching Spooks, but this is just ridiculous!

It makes MI5 look like a bunch of idiots, and it certainly doesn't make the Chinese or the Russians or the Americans look any better, it's makes the whole intelligence community look like morons because apparently Lucas just fooled them all but amazing-Beth figured it out in seconds!!!!