From: Stephen Date stephend999@yahoo.co.uk
No. A death is a death is a death. If we ascribe particular importance to one killing in an environment when killing takes place on a regular basis (no episode can claim to be entirely deathless) then we diminish the significance of all the others.
Hmmm. I'm really not sure about this. Undeniably all of the regular characters have killed people. Whether or not these killings should be condemned is rather more questionable.
Not quite what I meant. Violence - people killing people - is intrinsic to the premise of B7, and by and large it is rarely if ever questioned, at least by fans. Sometimes it's a tragedy, other times arranged as spectacle (Mori falling into a volcano, Dorian wasting away), most often little more than incidental. Sometimes it can even be light relief (Vila shooting a trooper in Games).
So how come Avon killing Blake is perceived as different, or at least more important, than all the other violent deaths that perforate the series? Because Blake is, well, Blake, of course. And Avon is obviously Avon. But if we dissociate ourselves from the emotional ties we have developed with these two characters, we might begin to see that who kills whom is considered more important than the fact that killing is taking place at all. This isn't a question of moral defensibility in any one instance, it reaches deeper, to the (dare I say) ideological foundations of B7 itself. Within the B7 universe, violence is a fact of life (as it is, all too often, in the real world), and is accepted as such by, presumably, most viewers. So I find it disturbing that so much attention, if not outrage, should be directed at just one of a vast catalogue of violent actions. What is more important - the act, or the actors?
Neil