From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V2 #160 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Monday, July 24 2000 Volume 02 : Number 160 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: b/comments7/16 [Dawn Friedman ] b/becoming ["Donald G. Keller" ] Re: b/comments7/16 [GHighPine@aol.com] Re: b/comments7/16 [GHighPine@aol.com] Re: b/comments7/5 [Dori ] Re: b/Becoming [Dori ] Serious Spoilers for upcoming Buffy season [Todd Huff ] Re: b/becoming ["David S. Bratman" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2000 11:48:34 -0400 From: Dawn Friedman Subject: Re: b/comments7/16 First of all, David, well answered! And thank you for giving my questions the benefit of the doubt -- I don't think you would have been out of line to respond less agreeably. I appreciate your patience. At 12:48 AM 7/23/00 -0400, David wrote: >Am I >not to be allowed to express slight partial disappointment in a given >episode without being accused of being a party-pooper so extreme that I >should consider leaving the list? Has my enthusiasm for "Hush" and >"Restless", to name two, not come across? Well, that's what I get for speaking out of turn -- I'm too new to the list to have the sense of perspective needed to appreciate that. I joined here partially because I was out of temper at some other lists, where fans who had trusted Chris Carter in vain a few years back were rushing to predict that season 5 of Buffy would be disastrous, apparently out of a need to protect themselves from potential betrayal. Some were so unhappy with the past season and with spoilers for the next that they came off as having been disappointed since the end of "Becoming." Which is, of course, their privilege; the fact that their opinions pooped *my* party was and is my personal problem. I probably should have had my rant out about that on some private list where demanding sympathy for something that's no one's fault is appropriate, instead of what I seem to have done, which is find a new list with the subconscious expectation that everyone there would agree with me. I'm usually the first person to enjoy differences of opinion, and I didn't realize I was still in a snit until after I'd posted. >The >inherent limitations of tv were brought forcibly to my attention. On >other occasions they can be ignored. Print has inherent limitations too. Yes. But I seldom notice the limitations of print, and one of the reasons BtVS astounds me so is that it so often does what print can't -- going places I probably would never see otherwise. Which is why we're here, I suppose. >So I can't really see how that's any less predictable, since it was >telegraphed. I think you're correct in saying that it isn't any less predictable _ab initio_; the proof that it was less predictable (for most of the viewers I know, at least) is that we didn't predict it, and we were expecting something more like your scenario. For you, clearly, it was more predictable. >And lastly, I still maintain that it is a flaw that this situation was >only created because of an artificial provision in the ritual. The technical setup might be seen as arbitrary, but there's nothing arbitrary about the events it symbolizes: sometimes true repentance comes after disaster has already been set in motion. Sometimes being sorry isn't enough, not because some people are unwilling to forgive, but because what's been done can't be undone, and actions have consequences. Sometimes there's no villain left to blame, but terrible things happen anyway. And yes, the show is flawed, and still good. It's just that opinions as to what constitutes a flaw are going to differ. Dawn ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2000 12:22:09 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/becoming I should be working on my essays (and I am, I am...inchingly), but the discussion has gotten too interesting. I'll toss in here something I've said before, about "Passion" (have you seen it yet, David?): the first time I saw it I knew just about everything that was going to happen, no later than the beginning of each scene; some things I'd been waiting for for months, some that I'd guessed in the immediately-preceding weeks. And I still might say (with the strong competition of "Hush" and "Restless") that it's the best episode of the series to date. There =is= a difference between "predictable" and "inevitable," though I'm not sure I can satisfactorily explain the distinction. That said, I go with the consensus here that it was much more tragic that Buffy had to =knowingly= "kill" the re-souled Angel than if she had killed him by "tragic misunderstanding" (as in =Othello= or =Romeo and Juliet=). Though I will agree with David that it was a thuddingly arbitrary plot device (Angel's blood) that set up the situation. We never did get a satisfactory justification for it; Whistler's exposition at Giles' apartment was simply inadequate. (I've often thought that a longer scene got trimmed for time considerations.) Note, however, the interesting implication of what he =does= say, that it was supposed to be =Angel= who =stopped= Acathla, and that "nobody saw [Buffy] coming." Does this mean that the Powers that Be (as only slightly developed on =Angel=) are =not= the Powers in Charge of the Slayer?? (This question just occurred to me today.) (Could Bad Angel have fooled Buffy into thinking he was Good Angel? He did briefly in "Innocence," but I'm not sure he could have after that.) I'm also going to disagree, David, that Shakespeare's sometimes-creaky plot devices are inarguable manifestations of his genius; "till Burnam Wood come to Dunsinane" and "no man of woman born" (quotations not guaranteed authentic) are pretty arbitrary tricks, too. (Not to mention the variant on the latter in =The Lord of the Rings.) And =Macbeth= is easily my favorite Shakespeare play. I do agree, though, that the poison Faith used to try and kill Angel was another such rather arbitrary device, but better handled. However, I don't believe Faith =did= know the cure, as this dialogue from "GDII" (quoted from memory: scary) demonstrates. BUFFY: There's a cure. FAITH: (half amused) Damn! What is it? BUFFY: Your blood. ("Buffy" and "Faith" have the same number of letters. Never noticed that before.) Note that Buffy does =not= say "a Slayer's blood." The atmosphere of the scene changes after that, as Faith realizes just why Buffy is there (and stays amused, though not worried--she thinks she can take Buffy.) (And I think =everybody=--Oz, Willow, and Xander as well--was stunned by Buffy's ruthlessness towards Faith. It was kind of unprecedented. Note, however, that Buffy still acted that way in "Sanctuary.") Back to the point: Faith's motivation for poisoning Angel was 1) it would kill him 2) slowly and painfully 3) keeping Buffy occupied and out of the Mayor's way. I don't need to belabor the point (that's Wesley's job) that that was plenty of motivation. Only the Scooby Gang's superior research skills turned up the fact that there =was= a cure at all; plausibly, the Mayor didn't even know. Bottom line is that it made possible a stunningly dramatic sequence of events, much as in "Becoming." David: Interesting statement about =The Owl Service=. I read it, once, when I was a teenager, and Didn't Get It. Must go back and have another look. (You =are= aware that =The Owl Service= was made into a BBC-TV serial, right? That's part of what Alan Garner's astonishing speech/essay "Inner Time" is about.) Footnote: It's been a long-term puzzlement to me that some of David's statements (no more strongly-worded than some of mine) have been received with some hostility here; maybe because I know him personally they've never struck me that way. He wouldn't be here if he weren't interested in open two-way discussion. Disagree by all means (with me, too). And David: everybody thought I was nuts when I insisted Faith was talking about Buffy, not herself ("...murderous bitch!") in "Who Are You." So, yes, I did mean what you rephrased me to say. It's really interesting to see another intelligent viewer's first reaction to episodes one already knows well. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2000 13:26:25 EDT From: GHighPine@aol.com Subject: Re: b/comments7/16 In a message dated 7/23/00 8:43:44 AM Pacific Daylight Time, dsf@world.std.com writes: << I think you're correct in saying that it isn't any less predictable _ab initio_; the proof that it was less predictable (for most of the viewers I know, at least) is that we didn't predict it, and we were expecting something more like your scenario. For you, clearly, it was more predictable. >> Ah, but he didn't predict it either. He was expecting something like the scenario he described. As were many other fans. The speculation that Angel would turn back and Buffy would not believe him was a common one, and the speculation that she would kill him as a result a bit less common (since he was a regular). But David knew that Angel was going to be killed, so he extrapolated the obvious scenario to the result he knew would happen. Whereas =no one= among all of the millions of Buffy fans predicted what actually happened. Even though I don't read every Buffy list and forum in existence, I can safely say that zero people predicted it, because if anyone had successfully predicted what would happen, they would have trumpeted it everywhere. That's even with WB loudly proclaiming that there would be a surprise ending -- as they said over and over in the promos, "it will all end in a stunning moment that no one will expect." And people who saw it earlier, in Canada and by satellite, saying, "Oh my God. I can't tell you what will happen, but oh my God." Even after the key setup point was given by Whistler during the episode itself, no one in any forum I have ever seen claimed that from that point they knew what was going to happen. (And there we're going by the honor system, because anyone could have lied and claimed that they guessed the ending halfway through.) Even though, as David points out, Buffy said over and over again that she would kill Angel, few people predicted that she really would, and no one predicted that she would under the circumstances that she did. In fact, I saw =not a single person= predict that said that Angelus would change back and Buffy would instantly recognize that he had become Good again. It's the art of "unpredictable beforehand, inevitable in retrospect," of which Joss is a master. Now, David is looking at it from an entirely different angle, as though looking backwards through a telescope. I can see why it would be disappointing from that angle, just as I can see why the view of the sky would be disappointing if looked at through the wrong end of the telescope. That's understandable. I wonder if David can imagine what it looked like to those of us fans who saw it the first time that way, with no idea what would happen. I don't know if you joined so recently, Dawn, that you don't realize that David did not understand what was happening when he saw it (very recently, knowing that Buffy would kill Angel at the end). He thought that Buffy sent Angel to hell because she felt he deserved further punishment. We explained what actually happened and where the setup for it occurred. So he didn't experience it the way the rest of us did, and he looked at it backwards, from the result to the setup, and saw how arbitary the setup was. Well, =all= of Buffy's magic setups, with the exception of those drawn from already existing folklore, are just as arbitrary and sketchy as that. But when you watch it through the right end of the telescope, you get "okay, this is the situation, these are the rules we are playing by, try to guess what will happen based on these rules." Working backwards from the ending (as I do habitually, in order to study Joss Whedon's masterful plot structures) I see all the time how, working backward from the results he wants,. he puts in place some seemingly arbitrary magic rule in place early on in order to create the setup for his ending. That is Standard Operating Procedure in Buffy. Joss's magic rules are always arbitary and sketchy and sometimes barely consistent He puts very little work and thought into the magic rules because they are not an end in themselves, but only a means to an end. That is obvious when you look at the plots backwards, though the wrong end of the telescope. The fact that it works when you look through the =right= end of the telescope is attested by the fact that no one (including David) has complained about the intruding auctorial thumb before, even though it is equally present throughout the series. Yes, David, I =can= understand why you were disappointed in "Becoming." If I saw it for the first time now, knowing that it ends with Buffy killing Angel, missing the key info that let me understand why she kills him and hence missing all the drama of that moment, I'd probably say "what's the big deal" too. It's like having to have a joke explained to you. I can understand why someone would not find a joke funny when it is explained to them. Not getting the joke the first time and then having the structure of the humor explained, and seeing the setup for the punchline and so on, pretty much kills the humor. No matter how funny the joke is. And when you already know part of the punchline already, that deadens it even more. I wish that you had experienced it under the same circumstances under which the rest of us experienced it. I can certainly understand why you are disappointed in "Becoming," David. What I am wondering is whether you can have an inkling of what the experience was like for those of us who saw it the first time. Gayle ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2000 22:33:01 EDT From: GHighPine@aol.com Subject: Re: b/comments7/16 One more comment. Something that seemed to bother David was the fact that Xander's lie ultimately had no influence on events (if he had told the truth, it might have made Buffy hold back in the fight, but if Willow had never given him the message, or he didn't see Buffy to tell her, things would have gone no differently than they did). Hence, it appeared that Xander's lie had no organic relation to the plotline. If I am interpreting David's comments correctly, this is one of the things that bothered him. Why should Xander's lie be in the story at all? It is in there precisely because it misleads us into thinking what so many people did indeed think would happen. Uh-oh, Angel's gonna change but Buffy won't realize or believe he's changed, and then we'll be moaning, "Darn, darn, darn! If only Xander had told Buffy what Willow was doing!" Xander's lie seems to be setting up precisely that turn of events. It appears to be a key plot point -- but Joss is using it to point the signpost of our expectations in the wrong direction. Joss uses this tactic frequently. That is why he is an unsurpassed master of "unpredictable beforehand, inevitable in retrospect." I study Joss's techniques minutely for what they have to teach about dramatic writing, Joss uses sleight of hand techniques, distractions, misdirection. He gives out key information so casually that you don't pay attention to it, while setting up huge decoy signposts in the middle of the road. Xander's lie was a classic example of the latter. A misleading signpost in glowing neon. (Even before Xander's lie, people were predicting that Angel would change but that Buffy would not believe it; Xander's lie shows that Joss expected us to think along those lines, and encouraged it.) So it may have seemed unsatisfying to David that that signpost turned out to point nowhere, but it was there for a reason. A classic Jossian reason. Gayle ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2000 22:52:52 -0400 From: Dori Subject: Re: b/comments7/5 Coming in =very= late... Meredith said: > I'll suddenly realize that I'm narrating my life in the third >person as I go through my day, visualizing my thoughts on a printed page >rather than as a movie. This is how I dream. Or rather, part of how I dream. If I'm suddenly wakened from a dream, I remember parts of it as images and parts of it as narration, and it just blew my mind the first time I realized this. - -- Dori cleindori@rica.net - -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- "I ADORE Joxer. He validates my inner geek and shows me and being sexy aren't mutually exclusive states." Alexa - -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2000 22:52:35 -0400 From: Dori Subject: Re: b/Becoming David said: > We >do not see Angel physically harming Giles, but nor do I get the sense, as >I often do with later incarnations of Bad Angel, that he's all talk and no >action. Well, the blood dripping off Giles' fingers sort of told me that. I'm puzzled, though--we didn't actually see Faith doing the major damage to Wes, either. I seem to remember her backhanding him once, but the Blunt and the Sharp, those were off-camera. I remember the camera lingering on Giles' wounds, too, especially that blood dripping off his fingers as he's slumped in the chair, but it's been a while since I've seen the ep and I may just be remembering what interested me most. I do remember that when I saw the Wesley torture scene, it seemed to me that it was handled in much the same way as the Giles scene WRT how much we saw of the injuries, though. In fact, I saw the scenes as parellel in many ways, and I'd be interested to hear more about why the one squicked you and the other didn't. Meantime, when I finally get home, I'll watch them both again back-to-back ("Oh, the hardship!" she cried, the back of one wrist pressed to her brow...) to see if I'm remembering accurately. - -- Dori cleindori@rica.net - -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- "I ADORE Joxer. He validates my inner geek and shows me and being sexy aren't mutually exclusive states." Alexa - -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2000 21:19:27 -0700 (PDT) From: Todd Huff Subject: Serious Spoilers for upcoming Buffy season This is from the Dark Horizons website, which is reporting on an interview with David Fury. Very exciting and interesting stuff coming up. You've been warned!!! spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers spoilers Buffy (TV): Desert News has a little more info on the character of Dawn after talking with writer David Fury. The character appears rather suddenly at the end of the first episode and is the focus of the second, though the mystery of her origin won't be heavily explained till about episode five. Fury says "Everyone has memories of her being a part of Buffy's life. They all know her. She's been living in the house all this time. It creates this very bizarre mystery that is not always the focus of the episode, it's just something that's underlying that. It leaves the audience wondering...but, for all intents and purposes, there is a Dawn Summers that has always lived and shared a house and shared parents (with Buffy)". The character will also be heavily tied in with this season's threat which Fury explains in cryptic detail: "I'll just say this - we're moving into 'god' territory...possibly something along the lines of The Powers That Be on 'Angel.' But more importantly, they're not just your run-of-the-mill demon-of-the-week or vampires looking to take control. They're pretty terrible and ancient and pretty all-powerful". Fans will also find out the meaning behind the phrase "'Little Miss Muffet' counting down from 730", a reference to Dawn which Faith (Eliza Dushku) made in a dream sequence in the third season finale "Graduation Day Part II". Thanks to 'TVsHenry'. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get Yahoo! Mail – Free email you can access from anywhere! http://mail.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2000 02:27:39 -0400 (EDT) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: b/comments7/16 I don't have time to do all of the previous comments justice - I'm still recovering from the back-up at work caused by my having spent half of last week in Philadelphia at a library conference (is anybody but me impressed that I visited eight states in one day? - it's hard to do things like that out west), I have three weeks to finish writing two Mythcon papers which I foolishly offered to give, and we have visitors coming in less than two weeks. But all three of you are being very incisive. Gayle and Dawn here, Don separately: Gayle: what I meant by the actual outcome being predictable is that _if_ the situation developed so that Buffy had to kill Angel, Good or Bad, to stop the ritual, she said she could do it and she did. I fear you may be right that my history of watching the show affects my reactions. I tuned in mid-3rd season, just before Angel's return. My reaction to that was "Oh, so this is that Angel guy we've been hearing so much about." An introduction like that is certainly going to affect my watching of the earlier episodes. Consider the first season, when Angel is mostly this mysterious guy lurking around the arras. And yet, and yet ... One of the definitional qualities of greatness in literature is that a book (yea, even a film or tv show) should be equally if not more enjoyable on second reading. Now this is meant to apply to those who at least have a memory of a first reading in the proper way, but should it not also apply to those who did not? Consider this: I never had a proper first reading of _The Lord of the Rings_, one in which the climax came as a surprise, because I was young and got impatient and glanced ahead to the appendices, which blew the gaff, first. Yet this has never impeded my appreciation of the story, and I've never had this kind of disagreement with other Tolkien readers. If this logic applies, the conclusion is a flaw in the storytelling process. You say that what I called red herrings and you call misleading signposts, a la Xander's omission, are common on _Buffy_. Perhaps you could give examples of others on this level, because I cannot offhand think of any. This is not the same thing as loose ends stretching over longer periods that don't get cleaned up (e.g. Amy the Rat), or points completely irrelevant to the plot that provide context (e.g. references to schoolwork) or complete nonsequiturs (e.g. the cheese guy). These are setups in the plot which are not only misleading but abandoned, in the sense that they are key moments in the plot which have no effect whatever on the outcome. Of course I've seen less of Joss's work than you have, but my impression is that such "wasted" material (of course in the sense you mean it's not wasted at all, but it is in another sense) is not at all typical of him. What's more typical is thematic parallels. For instance, Buffy being _tempted_ by Bad Angel pretending to be Good Angel, =OR= its opposite, Buffy refusing to be fooled by a Good Angel whom she thinks is Bad Angel in disguise, would have intriguing parallels to the scene in which Giles hallucinates that Dru is Jenny, and then we could all talk about that. We have talked about countless such parallels. It's also typical of this show to have simultaneous plot lines moving in parallel or contrary motion, or part of each: lots of examples of Buffy/Faith in the 3rd season, Buffy/Riley in the 4th. None of these require, or even encourage, false distractions on this scale. Dawn: One thing you might not know is that this is not technically a _Buffy_ list. It's a Friends of Don Keller list, a status I've been privileged to hold for over 20 years. When it was on Genie, at which time a lot more people casually dropped in, there were various other topics besides _Buffy_ that occupied a lot of space, notably music and baseball. But it seems to be mostly the _Buffy_ fans who've followed Don over here. Sorry as I am that my occasional music posts generate little response, I'm a _Buffy_ fan too, so that's otherwise OK. But I'm perhaps a little more jaundiced, a bit less of a true believer, than the average person who joins a _Buffy_ list. Especially because I'd be surprised if there are any other _Buffy_ lists like this one. The level of thorough analysis, the tolerance of it from others (no "gawd, why can't you just enjoy the show and stop analyzing it so much"), the absence of random gushing and other chaff, is unique in my limited experience of media lists of any kind. (It is, of course, true believers who are apt to be most crushed by disappointment, as you noted. I may never forget the fan of the original Star Wars movie who declared that in _The Empire Strikes Back_ Lucas had ruined, yes _ruined_, the SW universe - apparently because Luke suffers. BTW, who is Chris Carter?) If I seem critical at times, you are lucky you haven't seen me on recent fantasy novels. I love fantasy, but even the most highly-praised novels coming out these days are mostly utter trash. _Buffy_ is much better than that. I never thought I'd see a tv show I thought was better than most novels. For that matter, I never thought I'd see a tv show better than the movie it was based on. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2000 02:53:51 -0400 (EDT) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: b/becoming On Sun, 23 Jul 2000, Donald G. Keller wrote: > I'll toss in here something I've said before, about "Passion" (have you > seen it yet, David?) I'm not sure, 'cause I don't know episode titles. If it's a 1st or 2nd season episode that's not on the videotape release, then no. I haven't yet watched all the tapes, either. > That said, I go with the consensus here that it was much more tragic that > Buffy had to =knowingly= "kill" the re-souled Angel than if she had killed > him by "tragic misunderstanding" (as in =Othello= or =Romeo and Juliet=). Ah, but under my scenario it would have been (nearly) both, because she'd realize what she'd done. Nor would it be difficult to re-tinker the plot further to make her action necessary and deliberate, as it was, without rendering Xander's and Willow's intentions superfluous. > I'm also going to disagree, David, that Shakespeare's sometimes-creaky > plot devices are inarguable manifestations of his genius; "till Burnam > Wood come to Dunsinane" and "no man of woman born" (quotations not > guaranteed authentic) are pretty arbitrary tricks, too. (Not to mention > the variant on the latter in =The Lord of the Rings.) And =Macbeth= is > easily my favorite Shakespeare play. Very different situation. The witches in _Macbeth_ are not granting him a spell of invulnerability that works or ceases to work only under certain arbitrary circumstances. Instead, they can see the future and are teasing him with it. If the loyalists had attacked Dunsinane in some other manner, the witches would have said something else. There's nothing arbitrary, in this sense, about it. > (And I think =everybody=--Oz, Willow, and Xander as well--was stunned by > Buffy's ruthlessness towards Faith. It was kind of unprecedented. Note, > however, that Buffy still acted that way in "Sanctuary.") > > Back to the point: Faith's motivation for poisoning Angel was 1) it would > kill him 2) slowly and painfully 3) keeping Buffy occupied and out of the > Mayor's way. I don't need to belabor the point (that's Wesley's job) that > that was plenty of motivation. Which in turn is plenty of motivation for Buffy to be as coldly angry at Faith as she was. I'll grant you that Faith didn't know about the cure (my memory for such details is dim), but it hardly required a major arbitrary twist in the spell requirements to send Buffy gunning for Faith: she was nearly there anyway, and I remember for weeks previously wishing that somebody would take down or tie up that exceedingly loose cannon. All of this sequence is useful to keep in mind, btw, when judging Faith's motivation, and her increasing scorn for Buffy, when she returns. She nearly _died_ because Buffy was protecting Angel, and then she wakes up six months later to discover - what? that they've broken up already, and Bufffy is happy as pie with this new stud? Remember that Faith hasn't seen the intervening episodes. No wonder she's annoyed. > Bottom line is that it made possible a stunningly dramatic sequence of > events, much as in "Becoming." The best of these events - the Buffy/Faith showdown - was not completely dependent on the arbitrary spell requirements. The one that was dependent on it - the Angel Drinks Buffy scene - though impressively staged and photographed, was, I thought, a bit over the top in plot and sequencing. Sorry if this is getting rambling, but I still think that one was handled better; and insofar as it was handled the same as "Becoming", it had problems too. > David: Interesting statement about =The Owl Service=. I read it, once, > when I was a teenager, and Didn't Get It. Must go back and have another > look. (You =are= aware that =The Owl Service= was made into a BBC-TV > serial, right? That's part of what Alan Garner's astonishing speech/essay > "Inner Time" is about.) By all means do re-read it. I consider it and _Elidor_ to be Garner's masterpieces. (_Red Shift_ is a little too damn difficult.) It's about an ancient Welsh myth that keeps replaying itself out, generation after generation after ... It may spoil the book somewhat if you know that first, or the knowledge may be just what you need to crack the "Didn't Get It" problem. Two more clues might help: we're looking at two replayings here, and the protagonists overlap; and the finding of the owl service is what kicks it off. I believe I've read "Inner Time" and I wish I could see that BBC serial. Well, at least I've seen the BBC's Gormenghast serial, which despite some flaws is quite good, and which is based on a book I love even more than Garner's ... ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V2 #160 *****************************