From: Stephen Date stephend999@yahoo.co.uk

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Coming back in on this thread... Dayna says about the Sarrans: "Father says they were a problem when we first arrived, now they leave us alone."

In the same scene, actually, Dayna says that Lauren has "lived with us since she was a child"-- so she might not have been a baby, in which case the female infanticide hypothesis is void.

Anyway, if she was a baby who was exposed, how is it that Chel knows who she is? I think if female infanticide is a common practice he's unlikely to make the connection between a baby being abandoned and a baby turning up with the Mellanbys if they did find her soon after they landed-- she could just have likely have come with them on the ship in that case, and he'd've expected the abandoned baby to have died. It's not that likely he'd be keeping head-count stats on the ship's population :), and Lauren's skin colour is no proof that she's not an alien-- Avon, Servalan and the two soldiers are all white, after all. If she came to live with the Mellanbys a bit later, then Chel would know the whole story.

I've always assumed that the Sarrans were going to do something nasty to Lauren and Mellanby intervened on Dayna's urging

It's a good point, but the one problem I'd have is that both Mellanbys treat the Sarrans more or less like animals-- as I said before, they seem to have no contact with them other than zapping them and/or shooting them full of arrows, and Dayna's remark that the Sarrans gave them trouble when they first arrived but now leave them alone also doesn't suggest close acquaintance. Basically, it seems to me like the Mellanbys wouldn't have gotten close enough to the Sarrans to find out what sort of (political or religious) practices they have vis-a-vis doing nasty things to children.

Incidentally I'm surprised that Servalan didn't go back to Sarran and grab a shed load of the self-aiming guns. Might have done wonders for the Federation Troopers marksmanship !

Who says she didn't :)?

If you want to detect colonialism in B7 Aftermath is a much stronger contender than Deliverance :-)

It's more blatant in Aftermath, but I think they're both pretty good candidates.

Fiona

The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Educating the natives at http://nyder.r67.net

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