Raiker
A few words on Raiker. You could look at Artix, Raiker and Leylan as the three ages of man - the beardless youth, the cock of the walk and the disappointed old dog - and not in a positive way. Artix is ineffectual, Leylan weak - and Raiker?
In his first scene with Blake - in which, interestingly, Raiker doesn’t recognise Blake by sight, but by name as ‘quite the celebrity’, again suggesting that this is a culture that doesn’t have a visual news media - sets him up well as a piece of very macho, very bad news. He is all jeers and status - ‘something of a comedown for a leader of men, molesting kids’ he says, as if Blake’s loss of renown was the big issue with that. This is the very last time we’ll hear of the nature of the false charges at Blake’s second trial. Because it’s too grubbily, horribly real for what the series is about to become. And you could the say the same for Raiker.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Culture Bunker to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.