I really like Bounty. Ok part of it does come down to the wonder that is Tyce, but I like the notion of exiled leaders and the Federation not quite being all powerful, that planets could still break away. Plus it’s nice to see Jenna get the chance to play the hero, even if you never really believe she’s a complete traitor (it might have been more believable if it’d been Avon, let’s be honest!)
It's a subtle point, but the Federation of seasons one and two are pretty decent compared with what comes later; there is a certain sense of rule of law, officers who commit atrocities csn be courtmartialed for it (if only for show) and local regimes seem to be given leeway as to how repressive they chose to be (so long as they maontain order). That all ends under Servalan.
It's a subtle point, but it's the difference between living under Kruschev or Breshnev, or Stalin/Hitler/Saddam.
Very true.
The Federation in series 3 was in a mess, as Tarrant points out in Rescue, Xenon was outside Federation territory before the invasion, and it’s well outside their territory after their empire contracted, suggesting the loss of their fleet and Star One was a huge blow. However, clearly they remained powerful enough to stay in control, even of just some core systems, until Sleer’s pacification program gave them the ability to start taking back and expanding their empire.
Rumours of Death seems to indicate that, for a while at least, even Earth may have rebelled, given that Shrinker seems to have switched sides, then back again. Plus then you have Anna Grant’s little coup further indicating that even Earth isn’t safe.
The big question really is where the hell Blake was when all this was going on? The Federation was there for the taking in series 3, and even without the Liberator or Orac you’d have thought Roj Blake would have been swept into power. Or was it just, as Shrinker intimates, that the rebels spent too long “kicking the corpses” and not enough cementing control?
In series 1/2 I think it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility for some kind of peaceful revolution to happen within the Federation, with someone akin to Gobrbachev slowly providing more and more freedoms. By series 4 it’s clear that the Federation is a completely totalitarian regime, and it’s hard to imagine who can stop them, especially after the events of Blake. I guess if Avon and co managed to spread the cure to the pacification drugs there’s a chance, but even so it seemed like production would be a near impossibility without Betafarl.
I think it’s fair to say Servalan won…at least until someone more vicious and conniving comes along and supplants her.
