> Maybe, but I wonder. Natural selection, seems to me, would have
handled the
> worst of those for him. The brutals' world is pretty . . . well,
BRUTAL! It
> wouldn't take long for most genetic cripples to expire on their
own.

Agreed, natural selection seems to be spontaneous, and we're talking
about a world ravaged by a bacteriological war. That's not a joke.
Environmental damage was consistent to the point the world of the
Brutals is... "brutal".


> Well, that's a backstory the film never gives us. But I don't see
your idea
> as far fetched and, frankly, it would make Zed a much more
interesting
> character.

In the end, I think ZED is a second generation Exterminator.
His "grandfather" was a brutal, but his "father" was an Exterminator.


> Well, but there'd still have to be an "apprenticship" period as
Frayn (or
> perhaps the Exterminators themselves) evaluated potential young
brutal males
> before letting them in "the club."

2 years, maybe. And I see it like a too-stretched lapse of time,
figure it out!

> They wouldn't have this, however, if "fresh" DNA were introduced
to "water down"
> the flaws.

GREAT INSIGHT! I never thought about it.

On a side not, in the script ZED is referred as "2030". I heavily
doubt the Exterminators were more than 2000 at that time, or that
there was been more than 2000 Exterminators in LESS than 200 years.
I agree with Patrick Tilton on this, Zed was the "2030"th product of
the in-breeding agenda, involving Brutals and Exterminators.

Great discussion, of course!