From: Nicola Mody-Nikoloff n_mody-nikoloff@axis-intermodal.co.nz

Servalan must have been the most well-known person in the Federation, if

not

the whole galaxy. Her official portraits were doubtless everywhere, and

she

was probably on the viscasts almost every 'night' after becoming

President.

She wouldn't have been exactly retiring.

Not necessarily. To take a real world example, Stalin had his image plastered all over the place, but Krushchev took much more of a low key approach. Mind you, cuddly little Nikita was so pigging ugly he probably didn't want his face staring at him from every lackey's wall.

More likely, the sheer level of chaos into which the galaxy was plunged by the Andromedan invasion meant that Servalan effectively wasn't President throughout much of the former Federation. There might well have been no viscasts 'almost every night' and not that many walls to hang her portrait on.

I could buy the Sleer thing if they'd given her a different hair and dress style (like longer hair, tailored trouser suits), but she looks exactly

the

same. And even if it had become the fashion to resemble her (like the

Diana

craze years ago), it would be stupid to continue to do so after she had fallen so far from favour that all her colleagues were ruthlessly purged.

Now there's an idea to conjure with - the Soeurs de Servalan, hardwired cyberfeminist street cultists, supreme commanders of the post-war scatalopolis. ('Course, they don't let you in until you've mastered *exactly* the right way of flinging your hands out whilst yelling "Maxi-MUM POWER!!")

And why didn't Avon blow her cover?

Perhaps there was no point. It's another of those stories I never got around to writing, just who was pulling the strings behind Servalan, and why.

Neil