Helen Atkins wrote:
To me, the oddest thing about the episode was Vila's behaviour. He shot without trying any other ploy first - a sensible thing to do, but very un-Vila like. I thought his behaviour in the rest of the series was not personally physically aggressive, with the exception of Blake (and even then he apologised). In Gambit, Vila kills without hesitation in a very calculated fashion.
I don't think Vila did kill that guard. I too thought it was very out of character. But if you freeze-frame, he squeezes his eyes shut when he pulls the trigger (much more like him), and later the guard isn't there, seen as a blooper by many. I think Vila just stunned him, on a light enough charge too for the guard to crawl away soon afterwards. He'd be much more likely to shoot if he knew he wasn't going to kill anyone - after all in Moloch he couldn't shoot that trooper, and he objected to the killing of the putative Cancer. This time he just stuns a guard who was going to ignore him and pass by (and even then has to shut his eyes doing it) but possibly kill one of the others.
Nico
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