Michael Keating has died

(bigfinish.com)

44 points | by speckx 2 hours ago

9 comments

  • card_zero 1 hour 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.
    • dhosek 1 hour ago
      That’s just a perfect story.
    • busterarm 44 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.

      • simonh 27 minutes ago
        There were some radio dramas or something.
  • dghf 13 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.
  • technothrasher 15 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.
    • simonh 12 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.

  • saltyoldman 1 hour ago
    PSA: Keat[ing] was an english actor. Michael Keat[on] (batman) has not died.
  • Angostura 36 minutes ago
    Today I Learned Vila's second name. RIP
  • endoblast 1 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.

    • bryanrasmussen 50 minutes ago
      turning down an option does not necessarily mean you can't cope with that option.
      • dylan604 47 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?
  • MattCruikshank 1 hour 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.

    • rz2k 1 hour ago
      I assume it was changed so there wouldn’t be a name collision with Issur Danielovitch’s son?
      • bragr 1 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.
        • dhosek 1 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.)

          • madcaptenor 1 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."
  • addedGone 58 minutes ago
    cant access the website OP.
    • SirFatty 44 minutes ago
      Time to retire your NetZero dialup account.
      • addedGone 42 minutes ago
        but how will I watch all that ASCII pr0n from my minitel? :(
  • pixel_popping 1 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_honey 55 minutes 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_popping 48 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?