Harriet wrote: "Servalan, of course, was a hardworking and principled administrator, too."

I've often wondered about the coincidence of the early 1980s. THe above sentence works just as well with Thatcher instead of Servalan. The early 1980s were also a period were the IRA was getting some sympathy as a result of the hunger strikes. Thatcher was also threatening at the time to make the BBC a commercial station and/or restrict the licence fee (the main source of its income). The BBC at the time cancelled a show that was getting between 8 and 10+ million viewers about a group of terrorists who were treated as heroes and giving the strong female government leader (ok she was by now sleer, but was still seen in her Servalan role) a hard time. Was this all coincidence? I'd love to hear from someone in the know at the BBC at the time whether this was all coincidence.

-- cheers Steve Rogerson http://homepages.poptel.org.uk/steve.rogerson

Redemption 03, 21-23 February 2003, Ashford, Kent Celebrating 25 years of Blake's 7 and 10 years of Babylon 5 http://www.smof.com/redemption