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Survival School
I was just reading ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tgabrielle's most interesting old post about Survival School here and it got me thinking about two things.
1) Napoleon's student A-number one, top dog, big cheese, etc., at Survival School. That gets me all girly inside, initially, about how entirely sexy and cool he is, but you know what? Given what's required to be top dog at Survival School, it kind of makes Napoleon an asshole, doesn't it? Or at least, not really very admirable as a human being. Cunning, ruthless, underhanded, manipulative ... hm. Good UNCLE agent, not so good person.
2) tgabrielle points out that we see only the physical training and wonders if they simply didn't show the intellectual stuff because it's hard to film, which makes sense. But it got me thinking ... what if Survival School is just that? A physical survival school. And there's other schools, maybe one or more than one, with courses the agents must pass to enter the field. There's nothing indicating for sure that agents only take Survival School and no other training, is there? So there could be History School and Intelligence School and all that other stuff (or, one school for the physical stuff and one for the intellectual/psychological stuff). And what would that other school/those other schools be like?
So ... that's all. I was just thinkin. :)
tgabrielle's most interesting old post about Survival School here and it got me thinking about two things.
1) Napoleon's student A-number one, top dog, big cheese, etc., at Survival School. That gets me all girly inside, initially, about how entirely sexy and cool he is, but you know what? Given what's required to be top dog at Survival School, it kind of makes Napoleon an asshole, doesn't it? Or at least, not really very admirable as a human being. Cunning, ruthless, underhanded, manipulative ... hm. Good UNCLE agent, not so good person.
2) tgabrielle points out that we see only the physical training and wonders if they simply didn't show the intellectual stuff because it's hard to film, which makes sense. But it got me thinking ... what if Survival School is just that? A physical survival school. And there's other schools, maybe one or more than one, with courses the agents must pass to enter the field. There's nothing indicating for sure that agents only take Survival School and no other training, is there? So there could be History School and Intelligence School and all that other stuff (or, one school for the physical stuff and one for the intellectual/psychological stuff). And what would that other school/those other schools be like?
So ... that's all. I was just thinkin. :)
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(BTW: in the script, the school looks far more formidable ---castle-like if I remember ---and far more sinister). I'm at the Jersey Shore right now, but when I get home, I'll dig up the script and post the description.
Because to be an agent, 'survival' depends on more than being physcially tough and even being a good marksman. The psychological stuff would be important too, and in the end, that's what I think Solo excelled at. He probably impressed Cutter in a way Cuttern never expected, and that's why Cutter still remembered him for years to come.
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Of course, but it doesn't necessarily follow that everything that agents are taught is taught in one place (bear with me here; I'm not saying this is so, just riffin' on a fun thought).
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My thinking is this:
1)Canon-wise, Cutter's school seems to be the only game in town. The series doesn't say, oh there's this school and that one. That's why the infiltration is such a big crisis.
2) As an educator, I believe in an integrated rather than a piecemeal approach. The best programs, IMO, are those that balance theory and practice and teach them together. One of the complaints in my neck of the woods, communication, is that some grad schools emphasize one at the expense of the other with problematic results. You can't just put a camera in a students' hands; you have to teach them *why* they should be making a film and its impact.
3)I also think an isolation approach in UNCLE would be preferable. They consider themselves different from everyone else. Therefore, they would want to re-socialize the ex=intelligence and ex-military personnel they get as recruits. They'd want to take them away from the rest of the word, break them down and remake them into UNCLE agents, agents of diverse backgrounds that would learn to work together and depend upon one another. Moving them from school to school would, IMO, dilute that. Rather, you put them on an isolated island for 6 months to a year, you teach them everything you can and more importantly, you remake *how* think. Those young recruits in the SS episode were all from other services. They already *had* military commando style training. I think there was the insinuation that a lot of what was going on was not physical but psychological, so why not intellectual as well.
Like a lot of things in the series, I think this is one more instance in which the concept was superior to the execution. It gave us a seed to imagine something much more complex.
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