Michael Keating has died(www.bigfinish.com)
43 pointsby speckx2 hours ago9 comments
  • card_zero2 hours ago
    There was some graffiti near me that said "bring back Blake's 7". It appeared in the mid 80s, and lasted about 30 years. It was like a landmark. Eventually they did bring back Blake's 7, and it unfortunately wasn't any good, and the graffiti has faded and vanished now. Farewell, Vila.
    • dhosekan hour ago
      That’s just a perfect story.
    • busterarm41 minutes ago
      > Eventually they did bring back Blake's 7, and it unfortunately wasn't any good

      huh? They only announced the reboot in January.

      • simonh24 minutes ago
        There were some radio dramas or something.
  • dghf9 minutes ago
    One of the only episodes of Blake's 7 I really remember is "Orbit", in which Avon and Vila play a game of cat-and-mouse aboard a shuttle that's been stripped back to the wiring but is still doomed to crash into the planet it's trying to launch from unless another 70 kg can be ejected: as Orac helpfully points out to Avon, this is more or less exactly Vila's body mass. The respective faces pulled by Avon and Vila as Orac announces this tell you everything you need to know about their characters.
  • technothrasher12 minutes ago
    Sad news. I just last month watched all the way through Blake's 7, which I hadn't seen since I was a kid. Vila was always my favorite as a kid, and Keating still held up.
    • simonh9 minutes ago
      For me, it was always a two-hander between Avon and Vila. The sparks just flew whenever they were in a scene together.

      Vila was the most relatable character though.

  • saltyoldmanan hour ago
    PSA: Keat[ing] was an english actor. Michael Keat[on] (batman) has not died.
  • Angostura32 minutes ago
    Today I Learned Vila's second name. RIP
  • endoblastan hour ago
    Vila 'There isn't a lock I can't open if I'm scared enough' Restal was one of the finest sci-fi characters on British telly. The caustic exchanges between him and Avon were priceless.

    > Michael was asked whether Vila could cope living in a society stripped of all technology [..] His answer was entirely in character: "I'm sure he would survive. As long as he could make fire, keep warm and meet a young lady. He'd learn a lot about the trees on the planet, build a little hut. It would be wonderful."

    I'm not sure that is entirely in character. There's a marvellous episode 'The City at the Edge of the World' where Vila is the main focus of the story. He is given more or less the very opportunity described above and he turned it down:

    KERRIL Are you coming with me? VILA I can't. KERRIL Why not? It's a chance to be free. You saw that place, it's beautiful. VILA But there's nothing there worth stealing [..] a thief isn't what I am, it's WHO I am.

    https://www.hermit.org/b7/Episodes/scripts/City-EOTW.html

    Michael Keating also did a cameo in 'Micro Men' which can be watched on YouTube.

    Rest in peace.

    • bryanrasmussenan hour ago
      turning down an option does not necessarily mean you can't cope with that option.
      • dylan60443 minutes ago
        That was my thought when reading it as well. It wasn't the only option and he chooses to continue with everything else. The real question would be if the everything else suddenly vanished, would he be able to cope then?
  • MattCruikshank2 hours ago
    That's a bummer.

    I'll admit that, at first, I thought this said Michael Keaton. And oddly enough, Michael Keaton's real name is Michael Douglas. So, there's a whole spiral of madness that my brain went off into.

    • rz2k2 hours ago
      I assume it was changed so there wouldn’t be a name collision with Issur Danielovitch’s son?
      • bragran hour ago
        Yeah looks like Micheal Douglas was using that name professionally about decade before Michael Keaton started his career so union rules would require an alternate name.
        • dhosekan hour ago
          Yep, that’s also why Michael J. Fox isn’t merely Michael Fox. I like to imagine that at some time in the 25th century or so, actors will end up having names that sound like generic pharmaceuticals because all the names will have been used already.

          (As an aside, when Michael Douglas first attained prominence in the early 80s, I thought briefly that he was maybe the 70s daytime talk show host, Mike Douglas.)

          • madcaptenoran hour ago
            Michael J. Fox's middle name is Andrew. But he didn't want to be Michael A. Fox because that sounded too much like "Michael, a fox."
  • addedGonean hour ago
    cant access the website OP.
    • SirFatty41 minutes ago
      Time to retire your NetZero dialup account.
      • addedGone39 minutes ago
        but how will I watch all that ASCII pr0n from my minitel? :(
  • pixel_poppingan hour ago
    If webmaster is around, maybe let's adjust a bit the dictatorship? Can't browse (no privacy setup for this visit, just VPN)

    Sorry, you have been blocked You are unable to access bigfinish.com

    Edit: Works with privacy setup (Residential proxy + Spoofed fingerprints).

    • boca_honeyan hour ago
      It's really weird you go straight to "dictatorship" when talking about a regular security feature of most websites.

      Most people don't use VPNs, nevermind spoofed fingerprints, etc. The problem is on your side.

      • pixel_popping44 minutes ago
        I understand that some users are alright giving their browsing history to ISPs (it does, even with TLS 1.3 and DoH and so-on due to correlation but it's out of place here) but this is HN where I would believe that most have very basic security principles applied and we are also talking about tech, so it's relevant (VPN isn't for privacy, it's for basic security, it's unsafe to let ISPs resell history with identity attached).

        If we don't point it out, how can we expect a change and respect users that don't want to be KYCed when browsing a website?