Dana wrote:
Presumably Servalan and Travis aren't up to their eyeballs in suppressants (it's really scary to think that they're heavily medicated and would be more... extreme...otherwise). But in TWB, Blake is a high-caste respectable citizen and has to be told to avoid food and drink, so he is given suppressants. Were civilians but not the military given suppressants? Or only rank and file soldiers but not officers or not senior officers?
And does the Pylene-50 pacification program show that a) after the Andromedan War, the ordinary suppressants could no longer be administered? b) the Pylene-50 was just supposed to be topped up? c) TPTB forgot about the earlier reference to suppressants?
I imagine the suppressants weren't that extreme, or people wouldn't be able to do their jobs. Presumably Avon and Vila and others also got them, and that didn't stop them acting independently or even criminally. And the resistance group in TWB obviously overcame them easily enough to rebel.
Here's my theory: the suppressants work mainly on those who've been adjusted / conditioned, by reinforcing the treatments in some way. I can't see the Federation functioning if all its citizens were half-zombies, the people we get to see throughout the series certainly aren't.
In Space Fall, someone says that most of the cons are 'drugged to the eyeballs'. But with suppressants or something else? Blake and the others could hardly have gone without food and water for 4 months. I think drugs were freely available by choice. (From a dispenser? Note that the guard on the door makes Vila drink first). The prisoners took them for pleasure and to combat boredom, and the crew liked this as it made them amenable and easy to control. Anyway the other prisoners don't seem that spaced-out (sorry) to me.
And what did they use on the Space Princess? Something hallucinogenic to convince the passengers they'd seen all the sights?
Pylene 50 is something else. I don't know how the societies it was used in could function at all if people were so drugged they don't notice others being shot down beside them. You'd have to have a huge number of Feds telling them all what to do all the time; just not worth it. Can anyone explain that?
Nico