Nathan Hook wrote:

Betty mentioned the shadow scene with Avon's 'Next please.', and contrasted it as > more chilling than the plaxton incident in star drive. Initially I thought there was no contest. The Plaxton scene is worse. Poor old Dr > Plaxton was vapourised without a second thought. 'We can outrun that bolt, either > way she's dead.' Not even a show of regret or a posthumous thankyou from Avon. > Justifiable homocide? The ends justified the means and the ends was life.

I think Avon's view is that a show of regret or a thank-you would be utterly pointless. She's dead. Acting sorry about that won't change the fact, and it can't help her. And she had to die or they all would have died, so what's to be sorry about? And, you know, he's got a point there. Sure, it probably would have made the others (and the viewer) feel better if he'd acted regretful about it, because that would send out the message that, well, gee, he doesn't *like* having to be responsible for other people's deaths. At the very least, it would probably make the others feel reassured that he'd be unlikely to blithely sacrifice *them* under the same circumstances. But I don't think that's a message Avon wants to send, probably because it's an inaccurate one. As "Orbit" proves.

so the faceless federation guards then. Thats just it, they were faceless and part > of the Federation. the enemy. It seems justified to wack off a few to ensure the > mission wasn't compromised. They were "just" guards after all, they're paid for that > kind of thing. (like tarrant in powerplay and kleggs men)

You can get into a lot of sticky moral issues here, really. After all, Blake and co. were the aggressors, there. They were the ones who came and started attacking the installation the guards were put there to defend. So was it Our Protagonists who were in the wrong? (Imagine terrorists coming in to blow up a building and justifying shooting the security guards because "they weren't anybody important, and, anyway, that's what they get paid for." I'd love to see the look on the jury's faces.) Except, of course, that Shadow kills lots of people, so maybe it's justified to kill a couple of troopers to stop that. Except the dreamheads choose to do Shadow, don't they, so can you really hold the Federation responsible? And so on and so on... I don't think there are any clear-cut answers to that, really, unless you take a very hardline absolutist view of morality, like "killing is *always* wrong" or "the end *always* justifies the means." One of the things that I like about B7, actually, is that it leaves these kinds of moral questions open and doesn't attempt to preach any pat, simplistic answers. I *still* haven't decided in my own mind whether Blake was right to do all the things he did. I'm not at all sure there *is* a good answer to that one.

Then I thought...well hold on. That scene in Austin Powers...the guard flattened by > the steam roller...and the aftermath. tut tut.

Haven't seen _Austin Powers_, but I've heard of the scene you're talking about. There was a nice bit in the latest _Andromeda_ episode, though, in which (in a flashback) Dylan and the guy who will later become his first officer are infiltrating a building and end up killing a couple of guards in a scuffle. After which we're told about the one guy's five orphaned children who ended up in a "homeless camp."

We get a bit of that sort of thing, actually, in B7 with Maryatt, when we're told his family will be sold into slavery when he's posted as a deserter. It's probably not insignificant, though, that Maryatt is killed by the *bad* guys. We never hear what happens to, oh, say, Klegg's family when he fails to report back in after the war.