Blake's 7 - Travis - Table 3
Drowning Man (13 - Deep water)
“You're in a lot of trouble, Travis,” Servalan said when they lost Orac. She had intended the statement to shift the blame to him alone, but in other ways it was also an obvious truth. Avon had shot him, in a little over a year Avon would kill him. Yet he would go to his grave cursing Blake for his troubles. He had gotten in over his head, and now he would drown in his implacable, irrational hatred, no longer able to see the source of the dark waters that would destroy him.
Carbon Copies (24 - Blotting paper)
Travis’ hatred stained everything, blinded his remaining eye. Carnell saw the Blake clone as a kind of blotting paper - it could absorb enough spleen to keep Travis functional, for a while, and it was easily discarded. Like paper, it was a shallow creation, lacking the depth of experience that would make it human in the puppeteer’s eyes. This is why he would underestimate the second clone’s ability to defy his strategy. Ironically, Travis thought differently, his disgust imbuing the duplicates with a dignity Carnell’s indifference denied.
Lost Integrity (20 - Stretching the truth)
A soldier knows that some measure of honesty is needed for survival. Overestimation can be a fatal mistake. Travis kept reassuring Servalan that his luck had changed (when had he ever depended on luck?) that he would not fail (and he failed again and again), giving assurances based on the strength of his lie to a slip of a girl. Giving the order to deactivate the Forbidden Zone, Servalan was nervous, recognizing this new rhetoric of a politician as something foreign to his nature. In the end, Travis lost both himself and his quarry, but he took a giant down with him.
Judgment Day (04 - Calling me home)
In a strange way, the trial was like a homecoming to Travis. In the cell, he had a long time to reflect on who he was and what he had done. The truth burned his heart even as the smuggled liquor burned his throat: Par - that third rate trooper, Par - was the best example of what they stood for - better than the slimy Supreme Commander, better even than pompous Old Starkiller who practically exiled himself to retain his ethical purity. When Travis took the stand, he believed his own rhetoric - if he was found guilty, they were all guilty. Sentencing him, they sentenced themselves.
First Things First (16 - Evergreen)
But before he could inflict the death sentence he had been given upon the human race, he had to fulfill his duty to his uniform, and to himself. Blake was still at large; Blake the rebel, Blake the most dangerous threat to everything Travis loved. In the blasted landscape of his mind, Blake was an evergreen which never faded, put down roots which destroyed the foundations of all his beliefs, sent up sprigs of hope in the most unlikely and inconvenient of places. Blake would have to be felled before Travis could proceed. If not, there was always the chance that the Final Act wouldn’t be final, that even in that ultimate winter, something living would await the spring.