Personally I like Greif over Croucher. Two reasons. One I like Griefs voice better. I grabbed a sound file form a web site with grief announcing, 'Oh thats very amusing Blake, for a dead man.' The inflection in the voice is fantastic. His voice beats Crouchers hands down, Croucher always lacked that sense of authority and ruthlessness. Two: i think I got used to Greif, even though he only appeared in a few episodes. He was Travis. this is not intending to denigrade Croucher as an actor, however, i wonder if the roles had been reversed, would we have preferred Greif or Croucher? Pure conjecture.

Now somebody mentioned the possibility of men of ordinary rank or background making the rank of Travis' - an officer. Did travis in other words? It's possible. However, if we look at army culture now and how it works, certainly in the UK and here in NZ, which is based on the same model, the average squaddie or grunt, is never going to make officer. Having some experience of and known many friends who were/are invlolved in the army as grunts or officers, the general concensus is; they(squaddies) neither have the inclination and ruthlessly, often don't have the brains. Now this may sound extremely harsh, but a nz soldier earns about NZ $27 000, which is a pitance. I would want a lot more money if I was to be paid to be shot at.(the foods good though) privates, are shouted at, drilled and smacked about. this is done by lance corporals and corporals, who are only half a step up, or a step up from the privates. due to the general lack of intelligence amongst them and the fact they have "power" over other people, they rip into people. the saying goes, shit rolls down hill. in non - comissioned ranks this is certainly true. those with rank over inferiors are often overgrown bully boys who enjoy squashing people, just becuase it makes them feel good. Sometimes it serves a pupose and there are exceptions and exceptional people, however the officer ranks are a world apart from the non-commissioned ones. It is extremely difficult to move between the two. Indeed there is hatred from ordinary soldiers for officers. Officers are far better educated and!

better treated than the ordinary soldier. There is a clear demarkation between ranks. In the Uk this is particularly noticable, as you listen to the speech of an officer as compared to a soldier of a non-commissioned rank. The speech thing is not so distinct in NZ, we're not separated by old ingrained class structures which seem to still exist in the UK, but you don't find non-commissioned personnel sitting in your military history papers at university.

A rather blunt assessment of army culture, but it's been this way for a very long time, and is very slow to change. If we look at the structure of federation society, we know that people were ranked on intelligence. Villa supposedly hid his intelligence. Blake was an alpha grade and Tarrant attended the Federation Space Academy, which if we remember, was for talanted pilots and officers...that is if tarrant wasn't lying. listen to the voice, compared to villa. Essentially a class system. society may change with the advancement of technology, but human behaviour and motivations are the same. Hence shakespeare still relevant and popular as an observation on human behaviour. Travis himself recognised a clear ranking system. 'I'm a field officer! Not one of your decorative staff men.' Look at Parr in trial...clear difference in who had the rank and power. could you imagine Parr defending himself in a court marshal like travis did? Servalan and her pilots in moloch. She ranked them far above Grosse and his rank and file rabble. If the rest of Federation society was based on intellectual rank, then the armed services would most certainly have been. Nayte.

'A lady of a "certain age", which means/ Certainly aged.'Byron.

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