Stephen wrote:

...

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More simply why would natural selection

consistently

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favour link like traits against intelligence and

not

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ripping the head off anything you meet ?

Perhaps they can outbreed and outfight the more intelligent specimens :-)?

Maybe. But ask any conservationist which large predators are not in danger of extinction by homo sapiens. I'm pretty sure it would be a fairly short list.

But if they are descended from homo sapiens, all it would take would be for them to be more aggressive (and prolific) than the norm?

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Well, it was 1980 and SimCity was a few years off :-). But I'd imagine a live trial has the advantage that things could happen which the experimenters didn't predict-- a computer is only as good as its operator after all.

But the initial parameters of the experiment would have to be set by the experimenters. How would you allow for things like, for example, the mass extinctions at the end of the Permian era or the giant meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs ? It should also be remembered that human beings on different planets would be subject to different selective pressures. So human beings on Terminal might evolve into Links, on Sardos they might evolve into Moloch, elsewhere they might evolve into somewhere else.

It's interesting that the show does seem to recognise this (as in Moloch), but it's also interesting that in both cases the outcome is undoubtedly nasty. Could it be that the story is saying that we're going to get worse whatever our environment (and that Servalan's statement is a general analogue rather than referring to the links alone)?

Incidentally civilisation ending on a diminuendo as a doomed humanity descends into barbarism can be found in Stapledon's First and Last men. I suppose that it's possible that Nation adapted the idea.

Quite possible-- IIRC it was an influential book.

I have to say I really like the ending of Terminal as drama - as philosophy and biology it's awful -

Well that's social darwinism for you :-).

(apart from Servie not noticing the state the Liberator was in)

She does notice it-- she looks decidedly distressed at the state the place is in, but there isn't much she can do about it at that point, she's hardly going to go back down to Terminal.

If you haven't read the Plague you might like that too.

I'll take it out of the library sometime.

Jenny

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