7.6 [Re-watch]

[Silktie]

Lucas must protect a teenager from people who want to kill him, Ros must prevent the Middle East peace talks negotiator from being assassinated, and Harry enlists Connie's help in getting information about the mole in MI5 from one of his Sugarhorse assets.

Watch and discuss.

[JHyde]

I am very fond of this episode but I do think it is one of the weaker ones of an excellent season.

My reasoning is that I always knew where this one was heading. The choice of camera shots especially gave off clues as to who was going to be the unlucky one - and someone was always going to die in this. There is a sense of impending doom from the very beginning. Of course this assessment could also be why some people like it.

I do love the touches of old school spy-dom. The crossword, the running and car chases and especially the showing off of Lucas' and Ros' skills. The reveal of the Foreign Secretary being part of the web is a lovely touch and for some reason this episode has a certain allure on the believability front.

The continuing Connie and Harry storyline is wonderful, culminating, of course, in the breathtaking sequence as Harry gets home. The latter half of the season takes place over little more than a week and this rush and haste adds to the crazied terror that fills the last few episodes to breaking point.

[Sparky]

I really enjoyed this episode, especially as its the lead-in to the 'end' of series 7. Harry's face and reaction as he realises he's been set up at the end are fantastic.

As for the threat of the week, I thought it was pretty entertaining and I certainly didn't expect the boy to get shot - yet that is what Spooks does so well. In many other drama's he'd have been off on the train with his mum for a 'happy ever after' ending!

[A Cousin]

I thought this episode hangs together really well considering everything that is going on in it: Lucas & Dean, Ros & Sands, Harry & Connie.

I particularly like the filming of it. Every little sequence is really tight and clear. There are several really nice looking sequences. The shot in the car-park when Jo is driving in and Lucas et al are going into the shopping Mall is a great panning shot. The flashback sequence where Dean witnesses the use of the disruptor is well done. The door locking sequence with Dean's mother is very suspenseful. You just know she going to get it! The chase sequence of Dean through the shopping Mall to his death in the lift must have taken forever.

I can't remember if I expected the kid to be shot or not upon my first viewing. However, it still got to me. That is more because of the performance of the mother than anything else. Broke my heart. Even Ros looked like she was going to lose it. Lucas sure does go above and beyond, doesn't he? He seems to get really connected to his charges. I think the conversation he has with Dean about his upbringing is interesting. Is there something in Dean that reminds him of himself at that age?

Me being me, I was geeking out with Malcolm again and trying to figure out how "classified" the electronic disruptor weapon really is, and as usual, not very. Something much like it was made in 2000 by an ex-Navy engineer from readily available hardware for 500USD. The USAF has been working on high-powered microwave weapons since 2008. All this info is readily available on the internet, so how hard can it really be? However, it is another example of Spooks taking what is generally mundane technology and spins it into epic proportions. But that is what Spooks does.

Harry's tongue twister for this episode is "suitably seedy." I swear it seems like all of the writers have a collective goal to give PF a tongue twisting line each episode!

Some more great lines in this one:

Connie: How's the fall guy?
Harry: Suitably seedy. You chose well.
Connie: You're too kind.

Lucas: Understanding is over-rated! Just do it!

^That one should be a Spooks catch-phrase!

Sands: I was told you were the stuff of legend.
Ros: I'm not Greek and I'm not dead.

[Silktie]

I enjoyed the threat of the week; I thought it was well constructed and allowed Lucas and Ros to run around being heroes admirably. However, its conclusion made me roll my eyes. Honestly, Ros and company think the kid's life is in such danger that he needs to be moved to another country, but they think the best way to do it is to stick him and his Mum on a train, alone? Sheesh, no wonder the kid got shot in that very public train station.

The Sugarhorse storyline is becoming gripping. So Harry now fully trusts Connie, does he? Or was recruiting her to help him with his asset a test? I'm a bit confused on that point. I did enjoy the scenes between Harry and Qualtrough, Harry's sense of betrayal is very real. I couldn't help but laugh when Qualtrough told that Rugger story and intimated that Yorkshiremen would do the dishonourable thing, knowing PF is a Yorkshireman. Hee.

Also, the man has more self-control than most - he gets the info about the mole in the morning, but only looks at it once he gets home that night? Would he have been able to do damage control if he had opened it earlier? And did Connie know what was in the file she handed over? So many questions, and I'm enjoying every second of it.

[Silktie]

Did anyone pick up the Foreign Secretary's name in this episode?

[SweetTea]

(22-07-2011 08:51 AM)Silktie Wrote:  Did anyone pick up the Foreign Secretary's name in this episode?

You've probably found this by now but I believe it was Rachel Beauchamp.

The things I liked have been pointed out by others so I won't repeat but I did like the exchange between Malcolm and Ros, when she tells him to acquire the weapon and he replies that he's glad she said that because he already bought it.

Silktie mentioned Harry's self control in not looking at the file, but this really stuck out for me. Isn't taking files home a huge no-no and didn't Harry learn his lesson in 2.7? I'd have thought he'd have looked at that file the first spare 5 seconds he had.

[Noam]

I realise that the summit part of the story was the background thread and not the main thread as one might have expected. Even so: if the negotiator was forced to resign - as opposed to being assassinated - what is the difference re the negotiations? Obviously, it's a matter of degree, but which ever solution is chosen, the negotiator is no longer part of the process.

I too was very surprised that Harry took the file home (and every time we see his home, it seems to have changed). It also doesn't make much sense that the file was 'en clair' - I would have thought that the mole would have passed on an encrypted disk, similar to the memory stick that Lucas found. All through the 20th century, spies passed on microdots, not pages of A4. Have anonymous and encrypted file transfers gone out of fashion?

And as for the photographer's memory stick - surely the contents could have been copied without initially decrypting them? They only need be decrypted on the computer to which they were copied. No need for Malcolm to say that he "re-encrypted the data to look as if it had never been copied" - technically that makes little sense (if any).

[Silktie]

Funnily enough the fact that Harry took the file home never struck me as weird. Maybe because he was trying to find the leak off the record, I'd assumed he wouldn't want to leave it on the Grid where someone could tamper with it.

With hindsight, I'm curious whether Connie gave the actual file that the Russian asset had given her to Harry - meaning it had been doctored before it was given to Harry's asset - or whether she replaced it with one her handlers gave her?

[SweetTea]

I always presumed that the file Connie gave to Harry was not the one she received from the asset but one she had hidden somewhere. If that's true, then who did the original file identify and did Harry's asset ever look at the file? I presumed (again) that the original file identified Connie but that the asset never looked at the file, because otherwise why would the asset have given the file to Connie if the asset knew the file identified Connie as the mole?

Clear as mud, no?