Iain Walker wrote
Thanks for your thoughtful comments, Jenny.
Thank you, for yours.
I agree with most of what you
said, but I have a few replies:
Another indication of imperfect drugging is the public address
announcement: "President to answer
questions on population control". So clearly there are people
questioning authority
and public announcements about it
Or it's just a pretence that you have a say.
But why bother with the pretence if you have total control (including population drugging)?
To give that feeling of well being. In TWB they are not zonked out zombies. It's safe to assume that the Administration needs them to be productive in some way. So the drugs would have to be fairly light, and so would also need a propaganda support as well, to provide the pretence that they have a say in something. All fascists do it. Hitler used to say "There are two possibilities...Either we will do this, which will lead to disaster and ruin, or we do this other thing which will lead to prosperity and the thousand year Reich." The truth of the matter is that he was actually giving them no choice at all.
- I am sure the writers want us to believe some global nuclear or
biological war.
No. There were never any atomic wars. The reference to "pre-atomic" in
ROD is a reference to the atomic age not an atomic war. The "Galaxy wide atomic wars" crap only appeared in the pre-publicity hand outs for season
4. It
is never referenced in the series itself.
Well, I don't know anything about B7 publicity blurbs,
Perhaps you got it second-hand.
but at the time the
series was written/broadcast, the threat of nuclear war was a real possibility,
It still is.
which would require bunkers to survive and afterwards the
planet surface would be too contaminated to live on - so you live in a
dome.
But the surface isn't contaminated, is it? Blake even drinks from a small stream with no qualms.
The series itself does not directly tell us why they lived in domes, but my
supposition was based on the context in which it was broadcast.
Yes, but your supposition has to be based on evidence that appears on the series. In all 52 episodes of B7 there is no mention of an atomic war taking place on earth. It just isn't there. I agree it's unusual. Nation particularly seemed quite obsessed with the idea of nuclear conflict. The Daleks after all are the result of a neutron bomb and the Federation uniforms resemble the sort of thing you would expect troopers involved in biological warfare to wear. But there is still no mention of any atomic war taking place on earth in B7. They are in domes because that makes it easier to contaminate the air and water with drugs.
Anyway, there's other late-70s concerns than nuclear war which might have been referenced there. Pollution for instance. But whatever it is, it isn't seen, or referred to, in the series.
if someone is easy to bribe you have just established that they can't be trusted - it then
becomes
obvious that he will stab you in the back and turn you in to the authorities.
No it isn't. You don't report people who give you money; it makes you
look bad.
- The technician doesn't have to turn them in for the bribe, but for the
enquiries they are making.
Yes, but he took the bribe and showed them the classified material they wanted to see, which makes him look bad too.
- You can report people who bribe you. For example, give a police
officer
$50 to not give you a speeding ticket. He takes the money, gives you the ticket and then says you tried to bribe him. Simple. You are in trouble and he isn't.
Yes but he loses £50. As you said yourself, the chap in TWB appears to be just some small minded functionary. Why would he want to get muddled up with security? If he was genuine his attitude would be "not my problem mate". But he *does* report them. This suggests to me that he was a security plant himself. Another reading of course, could be that Varon's line about blowing the top of the whole administration frightened him. And so he thought he would be a good citizen and turn them in. In the end you pay your money and you take your choice.
Like some others, one of my favourite things about B7 is the insight into the federation. They aren't bad just because they wear black hats :-),
the
things they do to people in this episode (and other episodes) are completely appalling. Unfortunately, later episodes/series tend to focus on one blackhatted individual (you know who I mean ;-))
It does, but it's saying something very interesting there as well. When (and if) we get to those episodes you'll see what I mean :-)
Jenny
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Jenny Kaye