Every government, no matter it's political leanings, will keep things from the public, sometimes for noble reasons, sometime for not so noble reasoning.
Oh, I don't know about that. You're talking about 190-some-odd governments throughout the planet and several
de facto unrecognized governments. That's a
lot of governments, and they run the whole spectrum of political ideologies; so say that not one of the 190-something heads of government would be willing to release that information is, I think, premature.
It would certainly seem that if any government
did release the 456's plans for the children, the information never made it to Britain -- but, there again, considering that the British press were obviously under a state of censorship, I don't know if we can take that to mean that it didn't get out.
You do have to wonder what would be gained by releasing the information about the 456; world wide panic?
I can easily imagine some of the more populist governments -- Evo Morales of Colombia, for instance -- deciding to release the information simply out of principle: The belief that if the people of their country might be forced to sacrifice their children, they should know that it is going to happen and why it is going to happen. The right to know and all that.
I think what was brilliant about what RTD and co crafted here is that there were no right/wrong, black/white solutions. There was no easy get out.
Or, rather, no clearly moral options that did not seemingly have unacceptably high prices. It would have been completely moral for the governments of the world to release the information on the 456s and then act according to the consensus of the general populations -- but that would likely have meant fighting a war they could not win and thereby risking genocide.
I do wonder, though, why no one ever even speculated on the option of simply calling the 456's bluff. After all -- the 456s
need Human children. They're junkies. If they had wiped out the entire species, as they threatened, they would have destroyed their own supply. They'd be out of a dealer.
Another option that went unexplored was the issue of children who are brain-dead. Presumably, there weren't enough of them in the world, but I would personally argue that there's nothing immoral about turning over a brain-dead child who is on life-support -- such "children" are little more than shells, in my view; the thing that makes someone a person is the presence of a mind, and if there is no mind, then it's not a person anymore. But one has to wonder if anyone ever considered the option of offering to the 456s medically-certified brain dead children, since presumably the bodies would still be capable of producing whatever chemicals the 456s get off on, but without there being a mind there to suffer. One wonders if perhaps the establishment of a permanent trade deal there might have given the 456s a steady supply of their drug while averting the need to, in essence, enslave human beings.
I'm a bit curious as to why the 456s were apparently able to mind-mojo all of the children of the world into freezing and reciting ominous warnings, but not able to just mind-mojo them into gathering into specific locations for beam-up. Had they thought of this, they would have been able to cut out the worlds' governments and avoid having to deal with them in what could easily have been a mass abduction that occurred with no warning and therefore no ability by Humans to thwart it.
I do find myself wondering why the 456s, who are apparently talented enough biologists that they can engineer unique and fast-acting strains of flu to serve as biological weapons, cannot simply figure out how to synthesize the chemicals that childrens' bodies produce -- or, for that matter, clone more Human children from the ones that the Brits handed over in 1965. To me, that almost suggests that maybe they're not as good as they say they are -- maybe their biological weapons are not as dangerous to the species as they claim. A virus that kills its hosts as quickly as the one released into Thames House, for instance, would probably never be able to survive long enough to threaten epidemic or pandemic status -- they'd kill their hosts before they'd even have enough time to spread outside of a building. All the more reason someone should have thought to call their bluff.
but, there again, everyone was so terrorized with fear of the 456s that it's not unrealistic that no one thought to do it -- and, similarly, if the 456s were all strung out on their drugs, I can see where they might no longer be capable of the kind of sophisticated planning they might need to organize a mass abduction without Human help.
and he still has trouble coming up with credible solutions to huge disasters/invasions etc- this one worked though, if only because of the sacrifice Jack made, and it wasn't quite as bad as just twiddling some knobs.
