On 17/11/2012 19:52, jack wrote:
> Some fifteen years later am going through the series again, now on
DVD.  Still such a great series.   One question on the Z episode.  Did
Shadows prefer telepaths to run their vessels, they were better at it than
"normals"?  Anna was never written as a telepath but she was
written to have been hooked up to drive a Shadow ship.  Did the Shadows use
non-telepaths in other ways in their vessels or is there an error in the
writing?   Btw, listening to the commentary for that episode I'd say that
the show's writing is not too talky at all.  There always comes a time in a
complicated story when you finally have to let the audience in on the big
secret.  Often, say in an action movie, like the Bond films, the expository
fill-in is covered up by the villain gloating throughout it, but here I
found Justin, Anna, and Morden's explanation not at all too long to hear
out, even though I now know what's coming.  It's three seasons of waiting
for this moment so the payoff was worth it.   
 What pr
obably as as a sequence did trouble me for its brevity was how quickly
Ivanova was able to bait the "Zog" First Ones into helping them.
>

The shadow ships were designed to be run by mundanes.  It is only about 
the time of "Ship of Tears" that the Shadows upgraded their CPUs.

Andrew Swallow
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