Personal revelation vs. free will

[Cyberman]

The lie is safe because it guards itself (Blake's 7 reference, for my fellow geeks out there.)

I saw all of Blakes 7 and don't get this reference.

Please refresh my memory.

No problem, Plumb. It's a paraphrased line from the Season 2 episode "Weapon". Plotwise, there's a fugitive technician from a Federation Weapons Development Base named Coser who fakes a crashlanding on a remote planet with a new weapon he's invented called IMIPAK (Induced Molecular Instability Projector And Key). Basically, it's a rifle-shaped device that induces a lethal molecular instability in whatever it's fired at, but which only kills if and when you press the button on a separate remote control. Essentially, you can mark a person for death, with or without telling him you've done so, and keep him alive for as long as you wish afterwards; or set up a perimeter of the keys so as to make sure he will never enter where you don't want him to go. Coser is willing to give this weapon to Blake and his crew to aid their rebellion against the tyrannical Federation. (To anyone unfamiliar with the series, Blake's 7 is sort of an upside-down Star Trek; the Federation are the bad guys and the good guys are a disparate band of criminals, outlaws and revolutionaries who only follow their leader, Blake, as long as doing so suits their own agendas.)

However, the line I nicked comes from the concept of the Clonemasters, a sort of ecclesiastical order of human cloning specialists who hold all life connected and sacred. The Federation in the form of Servalan and Travis have commissioned the Clonemasters to create a perfect replica of Blake (actually two, since Travis shoots one of them) in order that Coser will hand over IMIPAK to the clone instead of the real Blake. The exchange in question goes like this:

TRAVIS: I meant no impudence, Supreme Commander.

[Fen descends the stairs unnoticed as Servalan and Travis talk]

SERVALAN: The Clonemasters are awesome, Travis, because they have ultimate power. They can create life, and in whatever form they wish.

TRAVIS: As can a number of Federation biologists even today. Cloning's been known for centuries, but was abandoned because it was inefficient and tended towards genetic stagnation.

FEN: I fear you are both mistaken.

SERVALAN: [Bows] Clonemaster Fen.

FEN: [Inclines her head] Servalan. It was never abandoned, Travis. The leaders feared its potential as a weapon. But a weapon once created cannot be abandoned. It can only be contained. And so they entrusted it to us. And we cannot create life in any form we wish. That would violate the Rule of Life.

TRAVIS: Power usually makes its own rules.

FEN: My predecessor believed in the Rule of Life. When the time came, a single cell was taken from her and stimulated into growth. The child was identical in every way to the child that she had once been. She brought it up, taught it, trained it - so that when that child became a woman, she not only looked like my predecessor, she thought like her. And like her, I believe in the Rule of Life.

SERVALAN: You were cloned. I did not realise that.

FEN: All the Clonemasters are themselves cloned. All are identical to the original group that came to this planet.

SERVALAN: And are trusted for the same reasons they were trusted.

TRAVIS: Belief in the Rule of Life .... What about an enemy who doesn't believe in it? What's to stop him cloning a whole army of fanatics to move in against us?

FEN: Nothing. But if it happened the Rule of Life is clear. We would help you.

SERVALAN: The weapon is ours, and safe because it guards itself.

FEN: Precisely so.

My paraphrasing sort of echoes the original context, in that the lie (of supposedly holy mythology) is owned by those who believe it to be true, and it guards itself by virtue of being perfectly circularly defined. If any of that makes sense to anyone outside my bizarre brain.