--- Jenny wrote: >
So what he'd have said would be basically "Then again, maybe you're wrong?" I think that's a bit too upbeat for a story like Terminal.
Surely he would have said "Well now, it's not my field but then again maybe you're wrong" :-)
More simply why would natural selection
consistently
favour link like traits against intelligence and
not
ripping the head off anything you meet ?
Perhaps they can outbreed and outfight the more intelligent specimens :-)?
Maybe. But ask any conservationist which large predators are not in danger of extinction by homo sapiens. I'm pretty sure it would be a fairly short list.
I am open to correction on this from anyone who has
a
better knowledge of evolutionary biology but I
don't
think that a Terminal type experiment would do more than give you one possibility for how things would work out. It would be cheaper and more effective to use computer modelling I would think.
Well, it was 1980 and SimCity was a few years off :-). But I'd imagine a live trial has the advantage that things could happen which the experimenters didn't predict-- a computer is only as good as its operator after all.
But the initial parameters of the experiment would have to be set by the experimenters. How would you allow for things like, for example, the mass extinctions at the end of the Permian era or the giant meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs ? It should also be remembered that human beings on different planets would be subject to different selective pressures. So human beings on Terminal might evolve into Links, on Sardos they might evolve into Moloch, elsewhere they might evolve into somewhere else.
I agree, it's a very postmodern ending. The theme of civilisation descending into barbarism seems to be a common one with Nation-- it crops up in the Dalek stories a lot-- made even more poignant here by the fact that the Federation is basically a fascist state and fascism is in itself a sort of barbarism. I find the costumes worn by Servalan's guards interesting as well. Bad, but still interesting in that Nicky Rocker seems to have picked up on the "fascists' descent into bestial savagery" bit. They are blond and wear silver space suits and remind me of Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and the Robinson family from the '60's serial Lost in Space: square jawed space pioneers, bringing to the galaxy family values, Mom's apple pie, truth, justice and mass murder. During one part of the episode two of them are beaten to death by a group of Links. Welcome to the future...
I'd never seen it in that way before. Personally I thought the costumes were appalling so I'm quite pleased that I can now watch it and think "Aha, profound symbolism" rather than "Fashion victims". Incidentally civilisation ending on a diminuendo as a doomed humanity descends into barbarism can be found in Stapledon's First and Last men. I suppose that it's possible that Nation adapted the idea.
By the way the note of tragedy that Jacqueline Pearce injects into her voice when she tells them that the links are our future always makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I have to say I really like the ending of Terminal as drama - as philosophy and biology it's awful - but as drama it's brilliant (apart from Servie not noticing the state the Liberator was in). In some ways I feel that it would have made a much better conclusion to the show's ending than "Blake". Only in some ways though.
(Who obviously read way too much Albert Camus at
university).
I liked "The Outsider."
If you haven't read the Plague you might like that too.
Stephen.
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