Plot-holes

[BravoNine]

(16-03-2011 08:57 AM)penfold Wrote:  I couldn't really accept Connie as an FSB agent after her stint in 6:2, where she appeared to have a mini Porton Down in her basement, and saved the world

I guess for me, Connie was easier to accept because I always felt she had this shifty look about her, I don't know why, but I always felt this gut-instinct that she's not to be trusted. If anything, her turncoat moment was validation for my gut!

But still, at least Connie died with some measure of respect saving London from a nuclear attack, so either way, she did die with dignity and it did seemed that even in her coldness and violence, she seem to care about the team, in her own strange way.

For that I give the writers of Series 7 a kudos for at least allowing her to exit in a fashion that while shocking, still remained true to her character that she was at least willing to take the hit for a country she may no longer believe in.

(16-03-2011 08:57 AM)penfold Wrote:  Nicholas Blake as a member of Nightingale -no!

Ha! I still have issues with this one!

If Blake was a Nightingale member all along, then why the heck did he go tattle to Harry about Nightingale? Surely he would know that Harry would go digging around and find the truth! That's just galactically stupid!!! That's like poking at the tiger and thinking it's not gonna eat you....

I mean, what was the whole point of telling Harry about Nightingale, getting himself kicked out of office, install in a new dude, and promptly blow him up? What does this plan accomplish exactly other than to just blow someone up? I'm not even sure how this makes sense or how it even resembles some great big mastermind plan?

It just sounds stupid!!

Oh and of course, Ruth just magically finds it all out...

(16-03-2011 08:57 AM)penfold Wrote:  the Lucas/John 'revelation' - double no!

Honestly, they would have gotten a better season with the same ending result and still use the same storylines if they just had made Lucas insane or have a mental disorder or something! At least that would have made SENSE!!!!

Hell, I'd rather have watch Lucas go through some multiple-personality storyline than this rubbish of Lucas/John and the absolutely-no-sense-making-entrance-into-MI5.....it's just dumb!

At least Lucas with a psychotic breakdown or mental disorder would have made perfect sense considering his background and what had been done to him during those 8 years in Russia!

They still could have made Lucas go all coo-coo and crazy and end up committing suicide and all that, and that storyline would have made so much more sense and have so much more impact especially on the whole theme of what it costs to be a spy.

To this day, I will never understand why they thought Lucas/John was a good idea, how this idea even got past the pitching stage is just unbelievable....

[BoHenley]

I'd need more time to work out the plot-holes that I could overlook in S9, but here are the five I can't:
1) That Lucas/John "the pyschopathic killer" was linked to anything we previously knew from Series 7 and 8
2) That Lucas/John could fool MI5 into hiring him
3) That in 9.8 he's suddenly the expert at everything including acquiring cars, computers, medical equipment etc etc
4) That he can get access to the Albany file without anyone noticing or the guy whose ID he'd stolen remembering
5) That he'd sell off this "high security" Albany file for the love of a cardboard cut-out who we'd never heard of

Believe it or not, I started with three points. Better stop there.

But parts of the series were just brilliant. Just rewatched 9.1 and 9.2 - great stuff!

[BravoNine]

(16-03-2011 10:49 AM)BoHenley Wrote:  But parts of the series were just brilliant. Just rewatched 9.1 and 9.2 - great stuff!

Honestly, the big nosedive came at the end of 9.6, it was from there that everything just went completely and utterly pear-shaped!

At least through the first 5 episodes, and even in Episode 6, we had competent/real Lucas who did his job and looked out for his team, he was actually doing well despite the whole Maya/Vaughn crap that was going on. He was still MI5 agent and his real-Lucas side was still showing. Hell I was cheering him on in Episode 6 when he figured out the lies and he stuck to his beliefs, I was as proud as the team was to know Lucas was holding up his own.

And then the end of Episode 6 was like a giant explosion went off and Lucas went coo-coo!

From that point on there was just no going back...it was ruined...gone...

Also, this was pulled from the interview with the two headwriters of Series 9 and this is their comment when asked if they were concerned about negative reactions for this Lucas storyline.

"Not half! We knew there was dedicated core of Lucas and/or Richard fans who would want our heads on sticks. But you have to balance that against the desire to deliver a big, unexpected, shocking story and do something really ambitious - like turning your alpha male hero into someone else entirely. Giving Lucas a heroic exit would have been the safer thing to do, and Kudos are admirably rigorous about not taking the easy option."

Well I am glad they weren't worried about the fans being actually smart and intelligent, I'm so glad they went with the dumber nonsense than the easy option...

This just makes me hate the writers even more....smug idiots...

So their idea of fresh new exciting way to give Richard an exit is to turn Lucas into a crazed-killer who magically got into MI5 without a half-decent explanation, and they call this PLANNING? It's a load of BS!

At this point, I'm not even asking for a heroic exit, how about an exit that actually makes sense!!!!!!

Thank god Richard is now off to do a much better project with writers who can actually write good stories...

[HellsBells]

(15-03-2011 10:49 PM)A Cousin Wrote:  What they need to do is keep their archives in the toilets!

So here are my questions to all plot-holers. Are there plot holes in S9 that you would have accepted at face value or been willing to overlook if there hadn't been so doggone many of them? Because, lets be honest, the willing suspension of disbelief has always been necessary to some extent with Spooks from the beginning. Is there one (or two) plot holes above all others that, if they hadn't done them or had explained them sufficiently, would have made the Lucas portion of S9 work for you? Accepting the idea of Lucas as an evil sociopath of epic proportions as a given, I am curious to find out what did work for you and/or how you would have fixed what didn't work for you to make it work for you.

I know what you mean A Cousins any series of Spooks does have plot-holes in if you scrutinize it enough. But with series 9 the writers were asking us to completely change our view of a character that we had been watching for two series and therefore needed an exceptionally strong story to show that.

Plot-holes that should have been filled and would allow me to accept their version of Lucas:
1) Why would a stranded student in Dakar think nothing of bombing up his own country's embassy and killing fellow countrymen, was he just that mercenary?
2) How he got to MI5 and why. He had money and a new identity and was apparently an evil sociopath he didn't need MI5.
3) Why didn't Lucas just kill Vaughn.

I also wanted more of an explanation as to how someone can live a completely different life for 15 years, not just a different name but a totally different set of moral values.

[NightOwl]

I could overlook a lot if the writers had offered some plausible explanations for John's actions. John wanted to be somebody, fine. Most young people feel the same but what made John decide that drug smuggling was the path to take? Then, having bombed the embassy and murdered his friend (and done God knows what else prior to those final acts) he turns on a dime and decides to fight against people like himself. WHY? What brought about this abrupt change in personality and philosophy? How did he actually reconcile his two halves for 15 years without cracking up. Why did he feel that he could steal Albany and get away with it and get Maya, too? How would his life be better?

The whole Albany/John/Lucas is the ultimate case study in how not to write.

[HellsBells]

I think to adequately explain the John/Lucas storyline and fill in all the plot-holes would have meant concentrating solely on this story-arc for the whole 8 episodes, which it not what Spooks is about and certainly not what I would have watched.

[A Cousin]

(15-03-2011 10:58 PM)binkie Wrote:  Your optimism apparently knows no bounds

Nah! Just trying to make sense of all the posts. It seems to go round and round and round. I have a hard time absorbing all of it.

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(15-03-2011 11:55 PM)WhiteSwan Wrote:  Well, for me the biggest plot hole of all was exactly that - trying to tell us that Lucas wasn't really the Lucas of S7 and S8, but that he was an evil psychopath instead.

Not the question I asked, but I can dig what you are saying here, it was the sudden the turn around and lack of back-story. Spooks has done that plenty of times before and it worked. So, to answer the question I asked, is there anything they could have done differently that would have allowed you to accept it in any way? If so, what?

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(16-03-2011 12:11 AM)Byatil Wrote:  Just typed out a ridiculously long reply and then accidentally refreshed; currently in a severe state of depression over the loss of my precious anti-S9 argument, so will refrain from re-answering the posed questions until a later date. Why did my stupid finger have to slip and hit the F5 key?!

I've done that. When I have done it, it has turned out to be a good thing! What I am trying to get all of you help me with is make some order of this for myself, not confuse myself further. The question requires that you a) accept Lucas as the evil sociopath, b) choose the most greviously errant plot hole (or two) for you, and c) how you you have fixed it so that you could have bought it.

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(16-03-2011 04:39 AM)BravoNine Wrote:  My only issue is Lucas/John getting into MI5, if they had put out a decent explanation for how the hell the guy got through so easily, I would have gladly accepted any other little detail.

Thank you for being so succint in your response, Bravo. You and binkie are actually the two that got me thinking along these lines. You have both expressed the thought that some of the plot holes you would have accepted. Re-watching S6 and the Connie story prompted me too. You're a writer, how would you have done Lucas recruitment into 5 differently to make it believable for you?

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(16-03-2011 08:57 AM)penfold Wrote:  Like you BravoNine - I can and do overlook little hiccups- like getting from A to B in a nanosecond; staff members who don't remember Lucas hanging round the mainframe when their password was copied; spelling mistakes [Helman province anyone?].
They are almost endearing - but there are a few 'biggies' for me.
I couldn't really accept Connie as an FSB agent after her stint in 6:2, where she appeared to have a mini Porton Down in her basement, and saved the world; Nicholas Blake as a member of Nightingale -no! , and the Lucas/John 'revelation' - double no!

Endearing - I like that! Its a good term for it!

re: Nicholas Blake as a Nightingale member. For me I bought the logic that sometimes the best place to hide is in plain view. I won't go into my personal experiences in this area, but it has happened to me in a rather horrible almost lost my job kind of way. (I was not the perpetrator.) Suffice it to say that if one makes effort to be practically perfect in every way but one, that one will be harder to identify. So what is it about NB as a Nightingale member specifically that bugs you? How would you fix it. Would you just cut it? How would that have affected the series as a whole?

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I have questions for all who have answered my question. Just not the time to respond in one go! I'll be back later.

[Byatil]

Okay, time to attempt another reply! I've spent the past couple of mind-numbingly dull hours at work mulling these questions over, so hopefully I can coherently explain exactly what I have a problem with.

(15-03-2011 10:49 PM)A Cousin Wrote:  Are there plot holes in S9 that you would have accepted at face value or been willing to overlook if there hadn't been so doggone many of them?

In a word; yes. I could have accepted slip ups like the fact that none of MI5's computers have encrypted passwords, or that Lucas was able to easily plant his access to the database on a colleague. I could also have accepted that Lucas had suddenly acquired superior-hacking skills, and a lot of contacts in London. Those kind of plot-holes aren't actually too major; but they become so when the rest of the plot is on the brink of falling apart. Once you notice the big holes, the little holes seem to stand out more than they perhaps should.

(15-03-2011 10:49 PM)A Cousin Wrote:  Is there one (or two) plot holes above all others that, if they hadn't done them or had explained them sufficiently, would have made the Lucas portion of S9 work for you?

1. Maya
2. John infiltrating MI5 as Lucas North
3. The psychology behind Lucas-is-John
   

Those are the things I felt caused the biggest issues in S9. I think Maya was a completely unnecessary character; it would have made far more interesting viewing if Lucas had been forced to face up to Vaughn and Harry without the excuse of "doing things in the name of love", imo.

I can't accept that John would have gotten away with murder, and would have been able to assume the dead mans identity. If Vaughn had simply created a false identity for John (he had the contacts to make that happen, apparently) then John could have returned to England as "Lucas North", and everything would have been well and good on that front until Vaughn popped out of the woodwork to demand Albany or else reveal that John was involved in the Dakar embassy bombing. The murder of Lucas North seemed a tad unnecessary, when John could simply have assumed a completely false identity.

Finally, the psychology behind the "split-personality" was never properly explained. I would have liked to have seen some explanation for John's estrangement from his family (perhaps they might have disowned him when he became involved in the drugs market), as well as an explanation as to how he managed to masquerade as another man for 15 years. It would have worked a lot better (in my opinion) if John had completely believed he was Lucas. If he had suppressed his memories of John so much that he fully believed John was "dead", and that it was he, Lucas, who had murdered him. We could then have had some interesting scenes when Vaughn turned up. When referred to as John, we could expect Lucas-is-John to be confused and ask "Who is John?", until the magical suitcase turns up and catapults him into a series of flashbacks, causing him to begin to come to terms with the fact that he isn't who he thinks he is. We could have then had the slow, psychological break-down cumulating in suicide, without the angst of Maya and the unbelievability of his ability to "pretend to be someone else" for so long.

(15-03-2011 10:49 PM)A Cousin Wrote:  Accepting the idea of Lucas as an evil sociopath of epic proportions as a given, I am curious to find out what did work for you and/or how you would have fixed what didn't work for you to make it work for you.

To be fair, a lot of the plot would have made sense if it weren't for a few gaping errors. As I've said, my main issues were how the psychological break-down was handled in the first place, the relationship (or lack thereof) between Lucas-is-John and Maya, and the fact John managed to masquerade as another man for 15 years when he was working for the security services!
I think I've already explained how I think the plot could have worked better, but if you want me to elaborate then just ask

[HellsBells]

I personally think that if Lucas' reversion of events, (not knowing about the bomb, Vaughan killing the real Lucas North, his horror at the whole situation), was the genuine events that occurred then the only big plot-hole would have been how he got into MI5. I would not need any explanation as to why evil John turned in good Lucas, I would have accepted that Lucas was trying to reply his 'debt to society' for unwittingly murdering those people, as that fits better with the Lucas we knew from series 7 & 8. The ending could still be similar, perhaps with Harry being furious and attempting to arrest Lucas for his crimes, Lucas having to turn to the Chinese for a way out, but still killing himself when Maya died (although it would be quite nice if Maya could be edited out as well!).

[binkie]

(15-03-2011 10:49 PM)A Cousin Wrote:  So here are my questions to all plot-holers. Are there plot holes in S9 that you would have accepted at face value or been willing to overlook if there hadn't been so doggone many of them? Because, lets be honest, the willing suspension of disbelief has always been necessary to some extent with Spooks from the beginning. Is there one (or two) plot holes above all others that, if they hadn't done them or had explained them sufficiently, would have made the Lucas portion of S9 work for you? Accepting the idea of Lucas as an evil sociopath of epic proportions as a given, I am curious to find out what did work for you and/or how you would have fixed what didn't work for you to make it work for you.

Oh! So much to cover... so much texture... so much potential for over-answering

I think it’s probably important to establish from the outset the circular, and self-obliterating, nature of the problem. Your question pre-supposes its own conclusion (I think, therefore I am). At the same time, most of the discussion in this thread is rooted in the pre-supposition of an illogic in the conclusion. In this context, there is no “making the Lucas portion of S9 work”, there is only “what should the writers have done that wasn’t what they did?” This isn’t a criticism of the question – which is an excellent thought problem – it’s just a statement in deference to the irresolvable nature of the dilemma at hand. And it is a genuine dilemma as neither solution is practically acceptable, in either narrative or character terms. I have, as you might imagine, every sympathy with WhiteSwan:

(15-03-2011 11:55 PM)WhiteSwan Wrote:  Well, for me the biggest plot hole of all was exactly that - trying to tell us that Lucas wasn't really the Lucas of S7 and S8, but that he was an evil psychopath instead.

I do appreciate that your question is not: list the many and varied ways in which you deem this plot development to have failed. I do want to answer the question you have asked (it seems a fair trade for wading through the rest of this post!). I do want to discover a satisfactory accommodation of this plot development before I simply explode with the frustration of not being able to do so. However (you knew there would be a ‘however’), I also want to maintain the critical capability which identifies the fundamental reasons for my inability to accept Lucas-is-John as a conclusion for the character of Lucas:

- Cognition
- Moral purpose
- Logical construct

I accept that these look less like plot holes than they do oversights or compromises in writing or character concept terms. They do, by their nature, though, inform the success of the plot, and they are a substantial part of the willingness to flag up plot holes. At the same time, they are symptomatic of the logical and functional difficulty of the success of Lucas-is-John.

Ridiculousness at the level of necessary functional service of the theme is perfectly acceptable. We didn’t bat an eyelid when, in 7.8, Lucas conjured a complete and working knowledge of the London Underground service tunnel system (or, anyway, if we did bat an eyelid, we were too polite to mention it again!). Ridiculousness at the level of wilful ignorance - and transference of ignorance – by omission or denial of narrative or character integrity is harder to overcome. These are the big holes that make the little ones so much more apparent, and so much less tolerable. The cognitive coherence of Lucas’ character in seasons 7/8 – indeed, the cognitive object of Lucas’ character in these seasons – is what renders the lack of cognitive clarity in the character of Lucas-is-John the plot hole into which all other elements of the story affected by the conceit must necessarily fall. It is absolutely a problem of structure, and one which is anticipated by Byatil’s point that:

(16-03-2011 06:00 PM)Byatil Wrote:  Those kind of plot-holes aren't actually too major; but they become so when the rest of the plot is on the brink of falling apart. Once you notice the big holes, the little holes seem to stand out more than they perhaps should.

Thematically, Lucas-is-John was an outstanding piece of service to the continuing, and consistently well-managed, rhetoric built up by this show around questions of character, motive and certainty. It was not, on a thematic level, a poor decision to introduce the concept that became Lucas-is-John. The shame of it was that the decision to do so was clearly taken only in advance of season 9, meaning Richard Armitage had had no opportunity to include John at even a buried level of his performance as Lucas. Even before we meet Vuaghan at the end of 9.1, we have been watching Armitage perform as Lucas-is-John (we just haven’t known it for what it was) and it is distracting. It is distracting in real time, because it has no context, and it is distracting in retrospect because, although the (rhetorically inconsistent and contradictory) trigger mechanism that is Vaughan and/or the suitcase has yet to be activated, Lucas-is-John is already present in the narrative. It just underlines the extent to which the lack of effort in communicating the operative function of Lucas-is-John undermines the successful realisation of the conceit in anything other than broad thematic terms.

Allied to this is the problem highlighted by HellsBells:

(16-03-2011 12:50 PM)HellsBells Wrote:  I also wanted more of an explanation as to how someone can live a completely different life for 15 years, not just a different name but a totally different set of moral values.

Obviously, the question of morality, and its operation and potential for compromise, is extraordinarily intricate and complex. Morality is, as HellsBells suggests, more than just behaving well, or ‘doing the right thing’. Byatil has also reflected on this question here: http://www.spooksforum.co.uk/thread-1504-page-3.html and the potential for deference to a moral context that is not one’s own is a defining feature both of religious conversion and of survival under any totalitarian system of government. The matter of belief in, or acceptance of, a moral code is not necessarily a matter relative to observation of that code. We could go along with the assertion of season 9 that the Lucas of seasons 7/8 was a creation of the moral fantasy of Lucas-is-John. However, the necessary return to the inescapable principle of cognition makes this difficult to accept. I like the point raised by BravoNine that:

(16-03-2011 04:39 AM)BravoNine Wrote:  Even Connie being the Russian turncoat that she is made sense with her change as it was just her philosophy that turned during her years at MI5, she wasn't suddenly some random Russian woman who loved her country so much....

Connie was the personification of an occupational hazard for the security service: a fiercely intelligent, adaptive, yet determinist, thinker with a first class problem-solving brain. Her talent was to work out the function of a system from within the system. That is what she did when she was on the Renaissance mission, and that is what informed her re-evaluation of the system from which she had come. Her actions, her moral justification, her logical application and her cognitive resolution all made sense as cogs in the wheel of her other-self. This cannot be made to work in the case of Lucas/Lucas-is-John because the moral desperation of Lucas-is-John does not inform the adherence to the notion of a social contract so evident in Lucas’ behaviour and articulation. If we are to accept Lucas as John’s other-self, we must see more by way of moral and logical transfer. At this point of the argument we find ourselves back again at the need to appreciate cognitive coherence. This is not the same thing as expressible logic – it is not an insistence that Lucas-is-John should behave in a manner that is predictable, or even in a way which ‘makes sense’. But, to enjoy a moment in which Lucas-is-John “works”, there has to be a clearly identifiable means by which the fiction is maintained, and this has to extend beyond the retrospective projection of cognitive (self-)deception onto cognitive (self-)confidence. If I am to accept “ the idea of Lucas as an evil sociopath of epic proportions”, I want a better explanation of where the epic sociopathy has been over the last 15 years, and how its supression and reassertion have been accomplished by the same cognitive and moral construct that maintained a character without it. This has perhaps less to do with plot than it does with the order of decision-making in conceiving of the plot in the first place.

I hope this wasn’t too much of a deviation from the intent behind your question. I didn’t mean it to be a tangential argument. I suppose my problem in answering the question is that my problem with the plot is not a problem with the plot (!). My problem is with the lack of attention given to the extra-narrative mechanism by which the plot had been maintained, and with the logical fallacy of rendering this development by use of this character. But you knew that already