The Marxist Department of the Lyst established:
>What we have here, then, is a pernicious piece of colonialist nostalgia,
>wistfully dreaming of the good old days when the sun never set on the
>Empire. It is glib propaganda for armchair adventurers who need to be
>reassured that civilisation amounts to supremacy and that technological
>sophistication is the only kind worth a damn. Ultimately, it endorses a
>self-granted mandate to invade the lives of so-called inferior peoples,
>prove one's superiority and promptly walk out again without care or
>consideration for the consequences.
Bravo! Bravo! Excellent!
Let us be fair to B7, however, and note that in general its underlying
world-view is far from being imperialistic. The Federation are the
imperialists, and they are the bad guys. As for the rebels, from the very
beginning it is the case of 'proles of all planets unite'. Bran Foster's
gang of rebels who live on Earth (cultural centre) neither resent nor
despise the inhabitants of the Outer Planets (cultural periphery), but
discuss the ways to help them gain independence.
Also, take 'Horizon', with its obvious allusions to India, and see how Blake
encourages Ro to break away from the colonizing influence upon his mind, ask
himself what his father (i.e., the past, ancestry, tradition) would do, and
act accordingly.
N.