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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Not just the variant monitor turrets, it treats the Xaos Custom Siegfried configuration as an alternate production version of the VF-31 Kairos also destined for NUNS service. The bits that aren't simply copied from the VF-25 Master File put a lot more emphasis on the Siegfried than the Kairos, and make the Siegfried out to be a lot more than the aftermarket custom job it actually was in the official setting.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, it definitely felt like Macross Delta often forgot that there was more to the war than Walkure's singing... and occasionally seemed to forget that Walkure and Delta Flight achieved the square root of bugger all for almost the entire series, and only made gains at the very end when Heinz was out of the picture. They weren't the heroes because they were saving the day... they were heroes because the story said "this is the designated hero". That said, the music from Macross Delta was exemplary so at least they didn't drop the ball after making music almost the exclusive focus of the series.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    I don't doubt that the reactions here have a fair amount of built-in bias because we're all Macross fans... but if the independent reviewers are any indication, bias didn't result in a different conclusion. The independent, non-fan reviewers seem to be mostly united in saying this is at best a thoroughly mediocre comic with a disjointed narrative that assumes that the reader is already familiar with the Robotech story and thus is making little-to-no effort to be an ambassador to the non-fan. Thus far, the only difference I've seen between non-fan and fan unpaid reviews is that the fans seem to think all the things that were dealbreakers to the non-fan are positive traits, and that the lack of innovation is something laudable. The few gushingly positive professional reviews reek of bought-and-paid-for. The general consensus on the current round of Harmony Gold legal actions against Piranha Games, Catalyst Game Labs, and their various partners is rather dangerously close to spurious. I got the chance to have a friend of mine who is a corporate lawyer specializing in patent and trademark law look over Harmony Gold's filing and claims. He did ask that I indicate that he was not acting in any official capacity on this and his impressions should not be interpreted as legal advice. That said, his impression of Harmony Gold's filing against Catalyst et. al. given the publicly-available documents was that there is very little chance of a judgement in Harmony Gold's favor unless Catalyst/Piranha/etc. did something incredibly foolish like using Unseen designs as the starting point for the new designs in their development process (and retained papers showing they did that could be subpoenaed). He reckons they're hoping Catalyst and co. will panic - either because those designs are illegal derivatives of the Macross designs or because the project can't afford the litigation - and will opt to settle out of court on Harmony Gold's terms. (It's likely a "brand protection" lawsuit, since Harmony Gold thinks the Robotech brand is worth something again and want to put the kibosh on anything that looks similar, possibly to show Sony they're taking custodianship of the series seriously.) Legally speaking, no... the comic is not representative of what a Sony-made movie would entail. Harmony Gold USA cannot use or authorize the use of the Macross designs and various key terms and story elements from Macross in new animated or live-action cinematic works. They can only use those things in merchandise, comics, novels, and video games all being merchandise. A movie by Sony would look nothing like this, for reasons of copyright. Well, there are still fans of that nonsense who will pay for overpriced trash, which is how the monstrously expensive Kitz Concepts stuff sells out of its ultra-low volume limited editions. Well, if they're targeting anyone who reads comics boy have they cocked it up...
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Given what a mess the TV series turned into, unless they have different writers attached my only reaction is "DO NOT WANT". The director's commentary on the Blu-ray better be two hours of Kawamori apologizing for this awful mess.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    I'm going to reserve pre-judgement until I find out who's writing this. If it's the same clowns who made a complete pig's ear of the Macross Delta TV series, then I want none of it.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    In hindsight, considering that the multidrone racks are one of the major areas where the Siegfried deviates from the base Kairos design, it's really REALLY weird that the Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31 Siegfried book flat-out ignored them. I have a few fun theories about how they hover like that without seemingly producing any visible thrust, the main one being that since we know they're already storing enormous amounts of energy there's a high probability that they're ionocraft lifters. Yep... that's how I figured out it was "crashed" that I couldn't read in the first picture. It was in a section devoted to talking about the YF-19 No.1 prototype, and one of the few factoids we've been given about that prototype is that it was damaged beyond repair and its pilot died when it crashed in the middle of its second flight test. From what Jan Neumann said, team Shinsei had had a nasty run of testing accidents that culminated in the deaths of two test pilots and hospitalized two others with serious injuries. Various sources have given 6 names for the 7 people to pilot the YF-19 during testing. One of the dead men is yet unnamed, the other is Juuso Grennan. The other named test pilots are Ken Grasshunt, Ludmila Blackwood, Rick Nieven, Isamu Alva Dyson, and Amy Cunningham. 1st Lt. Grasshunt and Lt. Col. Nieven were the two who ended up hospitalized, while 1st Lt. Dyson, Ms. Blackwood, and Cpt. Cunningham all came out of it unscathed. The gunpod mountings I've seen point to the gunpod being retained by a retractable bolt or bracket that extends between the arms in fighter mode and is counted as one of the fighter's weapons stations same as the underwing pylons. I would assume, especially on 5th Gen VFs, that there is some electromagnetic support helping keep the gunpod aligned properly during the transformation. The process of getting the gunpod from the arm mount to the hand seems to be either "catch it" or a handoff from one hand to the other. (It's one of those things that either happens too fast to see or falls under the header of "anime magic". The toys are kind of lousy about it, since there are a number of design concessions to making the toy more durable (or transformation easier on the purchaser). The arm-mounted anti-projectile shields are on a kind of sliding mount. You can see this most clearly in the VF-11 and YF-19 transformation line art. When the arms are stowed back in fighter mode, the shield slides on that mounting so that, while still physically bolted to the left arm, it's aligned with the centerline of the airframe. During transformation, once the arms separate the shield slides so that it's centered on the forearm and then locks itself in place again. 1. "Auxiliary propellant tank and atmospheric reentry fairing" is the description I have. Basically, it's a fuel tank with an aerodynamic shape. 2. The heavy quantum beam cannon assembly has a dedicated thermonuclear reactor powering it, the extendable cooling unit is noted to be mostly for space use to increase the radiating surface. It's noted that its coolant loop services both the reactor and the beam generator itself, but I would assume a key reason they need such a large surface is because the reactor is not expelling its reaction plasma the way the ones in the VF's engines are. Macross Plus did that, didn't it? Guld demonstrates the agility of the BDI-driven YF-21 No.2 by evading, rather than intercepting or outrunning, an Itano Circus of HMM-111CS missiles launched by target drones by diving straight through the barrage so quickly that the proximity fuses didn't have a chance to go off. Well, I have some news on that score that may improve your outlook on it. Y'see... there is only one production VF-31 unit in the Macross Delta series. The VF-31C, VF-31E, VF-31F, VF-31J, and VF-31S are not production variants of the VF-31, they're officially all one-of-a-kind aftermarket conversions of the VF-31A Kairos with informal designations. The actual difference between them is mostly cosmetic, because Delta Flight is every bit as much a performance unit as Walkure is. There's a dozen or so kilograms of mass one way or the other, and the number of ROV-127 beam machineguns, but that's about it. Master File goes and doubles down on it, as its version is that they aren't even converted from production-intent VFs... they're converted from early prototype VF-31s. (Which oddly contradicts the series, as it shows Arad operating a production-intent VF-31A in support of Walkure in flashbacks.) The only things I've seen that suggest there is any kind of difference at all between the various custom VF-31s apart from monitor turret differences is in Macross Delta Scramble, which asserts that the VF-31C and VF-31S are equipped with the same kind of command and control software as the VF-25S, that Messer's VF-31F has its control software optimized for use in atmospheric combat, and Arad's has all the limiters turned off. The VF-31A Kairos is the only production variant to appear in Macross Delta, though there is mention of a VF-31B which is in Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Film territory.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    The first paragraph is super blurry, can we get a cleaner shot of that? I'm transcribing most of it, but there are a few kanji I can't make out because of the focus. EDIT: Swinging blindly seems to pay off... one of the unreadable pairs of kanji was in a sentence about the YF-19-1, so I started randomly looking up terms I'd associated with it and got "crashing" (墜落), which does appear to be what's written in the unreadable space
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Sort of, yes. People associated with the Robotech creative staff - I wouldn't call them "friends" of the staff because they're more like disposable suckups and lackeys - have indicated that the sudden spike in the brand's output of crap merchandise is an attempt by Harmony Gold's management to raise Sony's confidence in the brand's marketability. They seem to be hoping that if they can show that the brand moves merchandise, even if the merchandise itself is trash, it'll make the execs at Sony Pictures more likely to greenlight the movie out of development hell. I suspect that's wishful thinking of the most hilarious kind. Sony's not likely to be fooled by a another lousy comic book reboot that even its publisher is uncertain about, and a bunch of super-expensive limited edition garbage rolling out of Hong Kong. I'm personally inclined to suspect the reason they feel the need to hit merchandising hard and fast is because they still have the albatross of Robotech RPG Tactics hanging 'round their neck courtesy of Palladium Books' incompetence. The level of ill will that seemingly inextinguishable dumpster fire produces is oddly impressive, and would've made any company uneasy about a business relationship even before it narrowly avoided accruing a death toll resulting from bad PR.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Should we petition the publisher to add a Surgeon General's warning to the cover?
  10. Seto Kaiba
    No problem, mate. I appreciate the chance to work on a bizarre and obscure bit of Macross lore. Mr March and Talos will probably get a kick out of this as well. I'll hop on this momentarily, I'm waiting for a few software updates to finish before I get cracking. Vector GmbH doesn't seem to quite get the whole "update in place" schtick, so every time there's a new version it's a clean install. Because, even though the material strength of those composites is around 100x what you get from straight steel, the power of weaponry in Macross is absolutely NUTS. We bag on the VF-1A's coaxial laser cannon because it's the weeniest weapon it's got. That is a FIVE. MEGAWATT. LASER. That is legitimately five times the firepower of the laser cannon that the US Air Force developed to shoot down IBCMs from tens of kilometers away. At a fraction of that power, lasers can set fire to steel like it's paper... and this is arguably the weakest weapon in the series. Remember those one-and-done little space fighters the ARMD-class carriers launched in Ep1? Those are armed with a pair of 750MW-class beam cannons and a half dozen 0.5kt thermonuclear reaction missiles. On a per-second basis, the GU-11A 55mm 3-barrel rotary gun pod is putting 6.84x as much energy on the target as the A-10A Thunderbolt II GAU-8/A 30mm 7-barrel rotary cannon... and that's just kinetic energy BEFORE you factor in the superior armor-piercing shell materials and explosive charges. From available numbers, a first-generation OTMat warhead filler like what was used on the AMM-1A Arrow medium-range multipurpose missile was 8.5x as energetic as modern warhead fillers used in the AIM-120D AMRAAM or AIM-7 Sparrow. No word on detonation velocity or temperature spike on the reaction, but those are probably a good deal nastier as well. That's the LOW end of the spectrum. That's where we START. It goes up from there, and IT. IS. GLORIOUS. Variable Fighter Master File declines to cite a specific output for the RO-X2A 180mm dual-action beam cannon on the VF-1's Strike Pack, but it's described as having an output of "dozens of megawatts". By the time we get to actual beam gunpods, we're looking at a minimum of several dozen, and potentially several hundred megawatts per shot. The YF-27-5's beam rifle was SO high-powered the twin-engine prototype needed a separate reactor module hung on the opposite wing from the gunpod just to drive it. A reactor that size could easily be putting out a gigawatt. The VF-1's CTRs were a hell of a lot smaller and they were good for 650MW (1,700MW if you believe Sky Angels) apiece. The amount of energy being casually thrown around in this metaseries is a little terrifying... these gunpods are chucking rounds downrange at speeds upwards of 2km/s. The VF-25G's "sniper rifle" is doing it at over 7km/s. There are reaction warheads in this setting that are rated at 10,000 megatons apiece. THEY ARE PART OF A MULTI-WARHEAD MISSILE. That missile has 24 warheads. Some absolute madman at General Galaxy or Yaesu or whoever said "let's put a civilization-ending amount of thermonuclear ordinance on this missile". Not satisfied with having built the very largest death-willy in all creation, he concluded one good turn deserves another and said "Let's put eight of those on one ship, just to see what happens". I don't even want to think of the amount of energy that something like a Macross Cannon puts out. Sustaining a continuous thermonuclear explosion so intense that the plasma's moving at nearly relativistic speeds for tens of seconds? A beam with a diameter of several hundred meters? We're into a scale of energy release where you need to have a good mnemonic device to remember the order the less-used SI prefixes go in. (Personally, I favor Karl Marx Gave The Proletariat Eleven Zeppelins, Yo... for Kilo, Mega, Giga, Tera, Peta, Exa, Zetta, and Yotta. It's not offensive like the one I prefer for the names of the planets, but it's still pretty good.)
  11. Seto Kaiba
    I concur wholeheartedly... though I'd suggest a corollary that, when we get a proper love triangle, there should be an actual winner from among the participants. I don't mean a "Babies ever after" ending or anything saccharine like that, just that there has to be actual closure on it or it's a total waste of effort. Having one party in the love triangle inexplicably frak off to parts unknown for a indeterminate span of time like that complete prat Basara did is not a resolution. Attempting the One True Threesome or Tenchi Solution in either its romantic or platonic forms like that utter berk Alto did in the Frontier TV series isn't workable either. Leave that one to the harem shows. I dunno, I thought within certain bounds Hayate and Freyja managed to actually be more likeable than Alto and Ranka. Maybe that's just because Freyja was actually a participant instead of a spectator and Hayate was a bit more mature and actually seemed to enjoy life. (Alto always felt like he was going through life looking for something to be angry about... which is perfectly realistic for a teenage boy, but not all that interesting in the bargain.)
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Star Trek lavishes most of its realism on propulsion systems, which are detailed with the kind of loving care that only a physics researcher could deliver. Macross tends to spread the love to the other systems, but propulsion is also probably the single most detailed section. I'm not aware of any existing translation of the box text for the Yamato YF-19-3, but I would be willing to take a whack at it this weekend if you can provide me with either scans of the text you want translated or some good, up-close, glare-free pictures of the text. (Not being a collector, I don't have one myself.) To the best of my knowledge, the Yamato YF-19-3 is rather different from Master File's YF-19-3, which was the ARIEL airframe control AI testbed built to the same spec as Isamu's YF-19-2 and piloted by Ludmila Blackwood. ... really? Well, OK. From what I've gleaned on the subject, the application of overtechnology materials and metallic composite manufacturing techniques to the design of threaded fasteners like bolts provided the same dramatic increase in material strength and wear resistance that the moving parts of giant robots benefitted from. They also enabled them to manufacture the threading on bolts to a far higher level of precision. That precision enabled them to use a threading design that was more along the lines of a precisely cut, slightly flattened half-hexagon profile instead of the somewhat rounded triangular profile of a normal bolt threading. As a result, they have a near-perfect pitch diameter, pitch, and angle match between bolt and nut, or screw and hole, providing an almost impossibly snug fit since the entire thread on both sides are engaging each other, instead of leaving small gaps.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Not disagreeing, but IINM the pages posted are not scans... they're the preview pictures released by the publisher and shared online by the various second- and third-tier reviewers who were persuaded not to ignore this lamentable tome.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Credit where credit is due, I just have a good memory for detail... the truth is that, in Macross, the show's creators think of everything. Really, EVERYTHING... even stuff you'd think is patently ridiculous like how overtechnology material science advancements impacted the designs of things like bolts and screws. I've always loved seeing the attention to detail that goes into creating a truly immersive story, and I've been translating mecha anime publications for about 13 years now. Macross does things on a completely different level from almost every other series I've looked at. Your typical mecha title's publications will usually stop at a level of detail like "robot's gun X is Y caliber with Z-many rounds" or "it has a _________ reactor". Macross will tell you the gun's muzzle velocity, that it's got seven types of shell and what they all are, how often the barrel assembly needs to be replaced, and how the targeting system works. Macross won't stop at telling you what kind of reactor it is... it'll tell you how the reactor catalyzes its fusion reaction, the means by which it converts the energy into electricity, nominal and peak outputs for the generator, what fuel it uses, how much fuel the fighter carries, the fuel's mass per cubic liter, the fuel consumption rate, the difference in consumption at different altitudes, the exhaust velocity, and the manufacturer's recommended interval between engine overhauls. Basically, most mecha shows give you Snapple Facts... Macross stops just shy of the level of detail you'd expect from a Jane's book or Haynes manual. The only other metaseries I've seen that even comes close is Star Trek. To date, there are only two technologies in Macross I don't have at least a moderately satisfactory explanation for. One is Energy Conversion Armor. The other is the Inertia Store Converter. I've got the basics of their operation, but I haven't yet found an explanation of the underlying mechanism. The missing pieces are whether the energy conversion armor is increasing structural rigidity in the hypercarbon composite layers or is somehow bringing down the elastic moduli in the laminate layers, and how precisely inertial forces are converted into dimensional shift energy to be stored in the ISC.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    So does the comic, what's your point?
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Oh ye of little faith... There are several reasonably practical reasons given for the move from integrated "main gun" scale beam cannons to a separate "gunship". Some of these reasons tie into the answers to your second question as well: Improved Modularity Having the Gunship-type Macross Cannon as a separate modular warship component that is docked to the Battle-class or Macross Quarter-class ship offers a few benefits. It ties into a decentralized power system, so the gunship can receive power from the other modules that make up the ship to supplement the output of its own reactors (e.g. for charging the actual gun) or it can divert some or all of its reactor output to the ship's other modules if there's a need to (e.g. a fold jump, reactor shutdown, etc.). It also makes it easier for to upgrade or repair/replace the cannon since it's a separate module. (It also offers the theoretical, crazy possibility of dual wielding if they have a second gunship to hand for some reason.) Capability for Independent Action Being a separate, modular warship, the Gunship is capable of operating independently of the ship it's nominally a part of. It's noted that it's even capable of discharging the main gun on its own, though it can't sustain a continuous discharge without the external reactor power of the mothership. (This means it's technically possible to let the gunship continue to fire on an enemy while the main ship wades in to deliver a knuckle sandwich.) Like the other modular components, it's capable of independent gravity control flight and fold jumps, so it can even function as an ad hoc lifeboat if something goes REALLY badly wrong, or be jettisoned if it's having problems without compromising the rest of the ship. Increased Arc of Fire Being handheld, rather than part of the superstructure of the ship it's attached to, it can more readily be brought to bear on new targets without having to turn the whole ship. This means it's also easier to "sweep" the beam across a group of targets. Three main reasons: Modularity Being made up of a number of independently operable modular warships, the power systems are decentralized. So if one module is damaged or lost, or needs to shut down its reactors to carry out repairs or maintenance, the reactors in other modules can pick up the slack. It also makes repairs and upgrades easier, since irreparably damaged modules can simply be taken off and replaced, or obsolete ones kept in place to keep the ship in service while new modules are being built. (Unfortunately it adds complexity, which is why we don't see more of them.) Maneuverability Unsurprisingly, having high-powered engine systems distributed all over the place makes the transformable warship a good bit more agile than your average warship. "Thrust vectoring rules the skies" and all that... Combat Versatility The humanoid Storming Attack form offers the option to do several things a normal ship can't do. It permits much greater freedom with the modular Macross Cannon gunships, enables a more "hands on" approach to ship to ship combat (by which I mean punching things), and it allows the ship to carry out unusual maneuvers like dodging by twisting to the side and can help implement things like boarding attacks (e.g. the Daedalus Attack).
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Actually, it would still be copyright infringement if Harmony Gold were to use the design from this comic in an animated or live-action feature... because it IS clearly derivative of the original Studio Nue design, and their license doesn't permit them to do that except in merchandise. The new design was completely unnecessary for the same reason. They can freely use the VF-1 design from the TV series in merchandise... and since the original work is a television series, the comic books are legally classified as merchandise. In short, they (meaning Harmony Gold and/or Titan Comics) are not "getting around" any court rulings. They're using the merchandising rights Harmony Gold has had under its license from Tatsunoko since 1984. (The comic uses the Super Dimension Fortress Macross design for the titular SDF-1 Macross, which makes the decision to go with a hideous piece of fanart to replace the VF-1 even more bizarre.) One has to wonder if Microsoft will file a lawsuit over that... it's pretty effing blatant.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Well, when you put it like that... yeah, I can totally see it. The Star Trek: the Next Generation movies never were my cup of tea, but I did feel like there was a pretty steady downward spiral in quality once they bucked the trend of even numbered movies being good. Generations was kind of forced and ended on what is arguably the worst pun in Star Trek history, but IMO First Contact is where the rot really set in. Star Trek makes a goddamn zombie movie. That was pretty evidently the point where ANY idea, no matter how stupid, would get a pass. I do appreciate that Jean-Luc Picard's inability to win a fistfight in any context continued to the bitter end, with him getting the snot kicked out of him by a clone of himself in a rainbow pleather onesie. De-lightful! I want to know where that damned pit IS. As big as the Sovereign-class is, there's no rational place to have a goddamn pit surrounded by bare metal rails. I know Starfleet doesn't have much time for OSHA, but still... Yeah, they've rationalized that as them being a variety of different sizes... the design apparently scales pretty well, and has held up for ages. The one area of inconsistency I wish they'd clear up is where the warp field coils are. The early Bird of Prey from Enterprise had a pair of dorsal nacelles, but I've seen stuff for the classic Bird of Prey claiming it has either a single warp nacelle internally along the centerline, or that the EPS feed to the wingtip disruptors also feeds warp coils in the surface of the wings. Remember those high gravity world aliens that spread the rumor that they were massively heavy to stop people picking them up? Physiologically, they're Stitch. It's right there in their description. (Hearing a Klingon quote Yoda was quite an experience in its own right.) Discovery looks like it's taking the Enterprise route... from what we've been told, the first episode or two are going to be a "nice job breaking it, hero" for the main character, which will lead to some kind of prolonged conflict with this new band of Klingon religious nuts. It's not completely terrible, but it doesn't really feel like Star Trek anymore.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    It's completely insane, really... some nutter looked at the ensign whose only noteworthy deed in a Star Trek teleplay was to spill hot chocolate on Captain Picard and said "this is main character fodder". (No I am not joking, she's the XO of the USS Da Vinci in the Star Trek: Corps of Engineers series.)
  20. Seto Kaiba
    's it just me, or does Gloval look like a grown up XBox Kid?
  21. Seto Kaiba
    ... and you felt the need to inflict haemolacria on the rest of us?
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Even letting them stumble across a relatively small population like an emigrant fleet would be an enormous problem, hence the drastic measures taken in securing the advance of emigrant fleets using stealth vessels. (Master File alleges that there are still cases where rogue Zentradi elements stumble onto and overwhelm colonies. Variable Fighter Master File: VF-19 Excalibur gives an example in a planet named Supika III, which was settled by an early emigrant fleet mission and was overwhelmed swiftly by a small Zentradi fleet that chanced upon them despite the best efforts of their eighty or so ships and ~600 3rd Generation VFs.) From what we've been told by Kawamori and co. in interviews (it may have been Otona Anime #9), the Zentradi Army doesn't exactly encourage curiosity among the troops... and that's probably a big part of why encounters with the Zentradi are so infrequent. The example given was fold faults... as the Zentradi are aware of them in a rudimentary sense, but because they don't fall into the category of "ally" or "enemy" they're ignored. The Vrlitwhai branch fleet only found the Sol system because they were on search and destroy ops and just happened to be in the right place at the right time to detect the residual gravity waves the defolding Supervision Army gun destroyer had made ten years previously. They only bothered with the Sol system because they saw evidence of an enemy ship. I'm torn between three potential theories as to why the Zentradi Army doesn't seem to notice that there's a galaxy-spanning communications network in place: The Galaxy Network is using fold communications frequencies that are unmonitored by the Zentradi Army... a. ... because those frequencies are not supported by Zentradi communications hardware. b. ... because those frequencies are not military frequencies monitored by the Zentradi. c. ... because those frequencies are ones the ancient Protoculture formerly reserved for their own military or civilian communications networks, and the Zentradi were given orders not to monitor or interfere with them. The Galaxy Network is using some kind of fold wave beamforming technology to provide a tight-beam transmission channel instead of an all-around broadcast, making itself harder to detect outside of the path of the beam. The Galaxy Network is using Zentradi frequencies, so the network traffic is simply missed by the Zentradi comms officers... a. ... because the transmission formats are not supported by Zentradi Army communications hardware, meaning it's unintelligible gibberish to them and is thus mistaken for malfunctions or interference. b. ... because the transmissions are encrypted, and are being mistaken for normal Zentradi Army strategic communications traffic. I suspect the truth is somewhere between 1b and 1c, possibly with a little bit of 2 and 3a thrown in. Believe me, you aren't alone... I may have it worse here, since I'm a network engineer.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, taste is highly subjective... but you've certainly taken a level or two in "eccentric", being the first person I've seen admit to actually liking those books. Most Trek fans I know who've actually read them tend to be (what's a nice way to put it?) "unsatisfied" with them. I'm not sure I could call myself a purist with a straight face, since I grew up on a steady diet of all things Star Trek. Both of my parents are Trekkies, and they reckoned Trek was more wholesome than what other kids my age were watching and reading regularly. (I grew up in the Dark Age of Comic Books, when Liefeldian ultraviolence and terrible "bad girl" comics, so in hindsight I almost want to admit there was some wisdom in their decision.) I had a pretty steady diet of Star Trek's novels, comic books, etc. back then. Pocket Books' Star Trek: the Next Generation series of light novels was more hit than miss, IMO, but there was also a fair amount of genuine garbage mixed into what I got (e.g. The Return, Q-Squared.) I even had bootlegs of the old Star Trek cartoon. The problem I've got with a lot of the modern Star Trek Expanded Universe is that most of what's been written reads, IMO, like the very worst kind of fan-fiction. (That hasn't actually stopped me from buying and reading most of it, but still...) So much of it is just incredibly lazy writing. Most of the writers don't seem to want to develop new characters or let go of existing ones, so every EU series falls into the same rut as the Star Wars EU almost immediately. No character is ever allowed to retire, or fade from the spotlight, or live out a life in peace after their series-specific story arc ended. Even death doesn't spare them from being dragged back for abuse by the EU authors. It's the perennial "Enterprise is the only ship in range" problem writ small. No event of import is seemingly permitted to happen without an established character or five at the center of it, even if it makes no sense that they would be. Even nameless background characters who never had any dialog are suddenly of vital galactic import. Take, for instance, the DS9 Relaunch novels: Star Trek: Titan is just as bad in many senses... That'd be a nice touch, I think... as long as they didn't change gears the way Enterprise did with an inexplicable war arc because they felt it wasn't action-packed enough.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    At least they managed to sell the new Romulans pretty easily... if you want an alien race to seem quietly menacing in a "don't rush me, I'm deciding where the best place to stick the knife" sort of way right away you cast Marc Alaimo as their representative. As explanations go, I'm not sure it's really enough to justify the sudden and enormous shift in their overall design aesthetic. Isolated religious minority or not, these are still supposed to be the Prime continuity's Klingons, so it makes no sense for them to look like a cross between the Kelvin 'verse's Klingons and that complete prat Krall from Star Trek Beyond. The different taste in armor and starship designs can be justified easily enough, especially since it's implied by the makeup team that the Discovery Klingons belong to some kind of rogue, isolationist Great House that we've never seen before. It's been down since about halfway through TNG that the Imperial Klingon Defense Force's procurement isn't through common channels, but rather that the individual Great Houses all maintain their own separate supply chains and shipyards, and they aren't always singing from the same psalter even in starship design.1 So on that note it's certainly believable that this rogue Klingon group might have its own unique ships and armor.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Having grown up with TNG and later shows, I did find it interesting that the Klingons and Romulans seem to have switched stereotype hats in the creators notes around the time TNG got rolling. Roddenberry's notes from TOS describe the Klingons as being the untrustworthy habitual schemers and the Romulans as the mildly admirable honor-obsessed militaristic ones. Seems like Star Trek III: the Search for Spock was the last hurrah for the underhanded Klingons and from then on it was the Romulans who became the compulsive backstabbers and the Klingons became Mr. Honor-before-Reason. Makes you wonder what's going to be the deal with this new batch of Klingons in Discovery... the released information seems to suggest they're an isolated religious minority in the Klingon Empire like the Klingon pilgrims from the Voyager episode "Prophecy". Considering the claims that this is modern allegory, that probably won't be anywhere near as benign as the ones in "Prophecy" were. Since they're trying to upset Klingon tropes, I wonder if this is their return to scheming Klingons?
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