Seto Kaiba

Nah, we've seen what happens then... you just get Bond villains and upset your tailor. 🤔 Star Trek really has gotten comfortable dropping references to TAS though, hasn't it? There was a good twenty or so years there where TAS was nearly as verboten as subject as Star Trek V: the Final Frontier, Lower Decks of course hit us with some low-key ones like that Kzinti ensign on the Cerritos, the Pandronian drill instructor, and the corpse of Spock Two on display in a collector's ship. IINM, "A Space Adventure Hour" is the first overt reference to TAS in a live-action series.

Sort of? It's not Xaos's fault that the PMC division was financially unprepared to wage an extended war without the financial backing of their client government. Their contract with Ragna and the Brisingr Alliance was to suppress Var outbreaks and provide preventative measures. Legally speaking, they weren't supposed to be participating in the war at all because they are not strictly speaking soldiers. In truth, what it really shows is how wildly popular Walkure were in that part of space. Walkure were able to raise enough money to resupply Xaos's PMC division forces for continuing combat service in a single cluster-wise "guerilla live" event over the Galaxy Network. They livestreamed a concert to two dozen or so planets and it made enough money to fund a small army for at least a couple weeks! What must have been hundreds of millions of dollars at the very least.

Oh, I have no doubt that it's a true statement because of those factors. Xaos's PMC division is neither the largest nor the best funded PMC operator out there. Nevertheless, the Xaos PMC division's branch office on Ragna is based out of a large Macross warship with two attached aircraft carriers. The upkeep and operating costs alone on the Macross Elysion, Aether, and Hemera have to be pretty darn substantial. When all's said and done, based on these low-end rough real world estimates, just showing up to a fight costs Xaos about $151.9 million dollars... and at the time Xaos is worried about money, they've just lost their only client. Windermere's occupation forces are not likely to let the Ragna government continue cutting checks to Xaos, and to be fair Ragna's government isn't likely to feel obligated to keep cutting those checks either considering Xaos screwed up so bad that Ragna ended up occupied by the enemy. Your average large corporation has enough funds to sustain operation for around 12 months without any revenue before going bankrupt. Small businesses or companies with large operating costs tend to only have around 1 month's expenses in reserves at a time. Considering operating on a war footing is exponentially more expensive than peacetime, Xaos is likely operating without a huge "war chest" of funding since their main operating profile was low impact suppression of Var riots. So it's completely believable to me that they could have eaten through practically all of their cash reserves after losing multiple battles and having to flee from the Brisingr cluster with a ship full of refugees in tow. Especially since they would now have to be sourcing all their supplies from outside the cluster, which is likely to drive costs WAY up given how remote the cluster is.

It really is. It's even harder to believe Strange New Worlds is literally a spinoff of Discovery. If Starfleet Academy follows on from Discovery's tone and themes, it'll be nigh unwatchable. If it takes after Strange New Worlds it might actually be worth giving a look. The "good vibes" and optimistic outlook are essential for it to feel like Star Trek.

There was definitely a push to impose new controls on the New UN Forces to ensure that its power couldn't be wielded so freely or unrestrainedly as it had been before. One of them being a new regulatory body to police the VF-X special forces, which had been used by Latence's supporters to crush dissent. Money's money, yeah... though there are some passing mentions to the fact that Xaos Valkyrie Works did economize where they could. The Macross Delta TV series suggests the VF-31 Siegfried's customizations were rather haphazard, and pushed the airframe to or past its design limit making it somewhat fragile and increasing its maintenance requirements. Master File, in its turn, suggests that the Siegfried's fold wave system was a heavily economized model that sacrificed output and the ability to self-start (requiring an external source of fold waves) to achieve a cost reduction sufficient to allow Xaos to manufacture multiple units. Yeah, at the very least I can reuse the most expensive part of the PC... that bloody RTX 4080.

It probably could have been reworked as a good and hopeful story about the triumph of reason over fear, but only in a very different sort of Star Trek series. One of the (main) reasons it fell so flat with audiences was that the bleak and miserable 32nd century future after the Burn really wasn't all that different from the bleak and miserable 23rd century future Discovery had already spent two seasons showing us. The year on the calendar changed significantly, but little else did. Discovery's crew were miserable bastards who hated themselves and each other, the galaxy was still damned and doomed at the hands of alien warlords from TOS-era species, and the whole thing was one massive idiot plot (The Burn) built on a string of plot holes and continuity errors and orbited by a string of smaller idiot plots. It could have worked if it'd been done with a crew that had... y'know... actually believed in and embodied the Federation's ideals. Discovery's crew seemed to be no more than dimly aware that the Federation even had ideals, and certainly couldn't name them if you asked.

That may have been part of it, though I'm sure the primary reason was to give the individual member governments full control over their local defense forces. Even if the Xaos PMC division is a small-time operator as a PMC, it's still a division of a much larger conglomerate mega-corporation with vast resources at their disposal. It probably helped that Xaos didn't have to pay for the aircraft themselves. Yep. I had a fairly high-end rig and unfortuantely the time it takes to RMA those defective chips is so tediously long that it's arguably faster to buy a whole new PC at this point.

The central New UN Forces under the direct authority of the New UN Government itself are absolutely still humanity's Biggest Stick™. On the other hand, the quality of the various local defense forces that individual New UN Gov't member nations operate under the New UN Forces banner can vary wildly based on their government's priorities and resources. Wealthy emigrant governments like Macross Frontier or Macross Galaxy can afford to spend big on defense and thus boast large local defense forces with state-of-the-art weapons and well-trained soldiers. Others governments like the worlds of the Brisingr Alliance have to be more restrained and have smaller or less capable forces. It is theoretically a single entity, but it's a heavily decentralized one that's on a much tighter leash after the Second Unification War(s) due to the involvement several generals had in the coup attempt. Master File rather unfortunately glosses over the development history and circumstances of the production-intent VF-31 Kairos because the book is about the Siegfried custom and they only really want to talk about that. So instead of focusing on the domestic development of the VF-31 by the Brisingr Alliance they focus on Xaos's development of the VF-31S type. As I mentioned earlier, it presents an account that is somewhat at odds with official media in terms of its decision to depict the Siegfried as a low volume production unit meant for Special Forces use rather than the bank-breaking-ly expensive one-off Ace Custom machines made by and for Xaos they are in the Macross Delta series proper. That said, the central New UN Forces probably would want to produce the VF-31 Seigfried on a limited basis if they could get the plans. They put the YF-29 into very limited trial production for their special forces despite the insane expense, and even in Master File are maintaining actual squadrons of YF-29B and YF-29C types despite only being able to put together a few craft per year due to resource limitations. Not as of yet. I've been rather busy at the ol' day job and am currently between computers again thanks to having another 13th gen Intel chip fry out on me.

Oh... oh no. Thank you for that horrible mental image that absolutely won't be haunting my nightmares now. 😆

@snakerbot has the correct answer: To expand on snakerbot's answer, assuming that the New UN Forces are a monolithic organization is one of the more common misconceptions that fans make when talking about the Macross Frontier and Macross Delta series. The relationship between the New UN Government and its various member governments (emigrant governments) has been continually evolving in the era of space emigration, as has the relationship between the New UN Government member governments and the New UN Forces. The New UN Government was originally a strong central government with broad authority over the individual member governments. Likewise, the central New UN Forces wielded considerable authority over the local New UN Forces maintained by all of the individual emigrant fleets and planets. You can think of it as being a bit like the relationship between the US federal gov't and state gov't and between the regular US military and national guard in a sense. It's not an exact comparison, but the relationship is close enough to get the gist. Time, distance, and the limitations of fold technology gradually made centralized authority less and less practical as humanity expanded into the greater galaxy aboard its various large scale long distance emigrant fleets. Referring every important matter up the chain of command to some central authority on Earth simply wasn't realistic as a way to handle matters of governance or defense for a growing number of emigrant governments and the problem only got more pronounced with time. This led to growing unrest among the emigrant governments and prompted a period of small civil wars and uprisings that would come to be known as the Second Unification War(s) and culminate in the pro-centrists within the New UN Gov't and New UN Forces attempting a coup in 2051 (Macross VF-X2). They were defeated, and ultimately the pro-autonomy faction won out, granting more independence and authority to the individual member governments and decentralizing command of the New UN Forces to make it easier for emigrant governments to respond flexibly to threats. By the time of Macross Frontier and Macross Delta, the relationship between the New UN Government and member governments is more akin to that of the European Union. Emigrant fleets have had a fair amount of discretionary authority in deciding how to equip their local New UN Forces defense forces from a relatively early point. Macross 7 is the series this first rears its head in, with the central New UN Forces and Macross 7 fleet having adopted the VF-11 while the colony Megaroad-13 set up in the Varauta system made a decision to adopt the VF-14 instead. Master File suggests that this was the case from the very beginning, with some emigrant fleets toying with adopting the VF-3000 back in the 2010s. That has been taken to its logical extreme by the time of Frontier, with the wealthiest emigrant governments starting to get into the defense industry and begin domestic development of new model VFs instead of buying a license to locally produce VFs developed for the central New UN Forces on Earth. (This mirrors what Japan went through in terms of defense appropriations. Japan's F-2 is a build-under-license version of the US F-16, with Japan vying to break into the lucrative weapons export market by developing a next-generation fighter to replace it.) Earth and the central New UN Forces are implied (or directly stated in Master File) to have adopted the VF-24 as their 5th Generation main fighter from 2057. The specifications for the final YF-24 Evolution prototype, minus Earth's proprietary technologies, were transmitted to all of the emigrant governments as required by law. The Macross Frontier fleet used the YF-24 Evolution specs as a starting point for the domestic development of their own 5th Generation main fighter for their local New UN Forces and for export sale to other emigrant governments. Macross Galaxy did likewise, developing the VF-27 using both the YF-24 Evolution spec and stolen development data from the Frontier fleet's anti-Vajra YF-29 program. Master File's version of this makes it out to be a joint development program called "Project Triangler" rather than independent programs carried out in each fleet, with Macross Frontier partnering with Macross Olympia and Macross Galaxy to codevelop a next-generation fighter that all three fleets were supposed to adopt and profit from export sales of. Existing material suggests that the VF-25 was exported quite widely, with the Macross 7 fleet being among known customers adopting it as their next-generation main fighter. The VF-31 is not a replacement for the VF-25. It was developed as an alternative/competitor to the VF-25 by a regional economic/defense pact that had similar goals vis-a-vis the huge economic benefits of exporting weapons. The Brisingr Alliance is a mutual defense and economic union between the New UN Gov't's worlds in the Brisingr globular cluster. They're way off the beaten path on the far side of the galaxy and their sheer remoteness has not helped their economic situation. So the Brisingr Alliance floated the idea of joint domestic development of a next-generation main fighter instead of buying a license to build Earth's latest fighter again as a way to keep defense spending within the cluster and stimulate the local economy directly. They also wanted to potentially export the new model to other emigrant governments and thus bring a new source of outside revenue into their economy. (The VF-31 situation is a very direct allusion to Japan's domestic fighter development plan.) That's... mostly unrelated. Master File presents a very different context for the VF-31 Siegfried custom which is somewhat at odds with official media. Official media present the VF-31 Siegfried as an Ace Custom machine that Xaos independently produced by making "aftermarket" modifications to a few of the trial production VF-31A Kairos units loaned to them by the local New UN Forces for field testing. Master File instead presents the Siegfried custom as a sort of limited production model meant for the special forces. On the other hand, there is almost no official info on the VF-31AX. Officially, it's implied to be just an improved version of the Siegfried and thus an aftermarket Ace Custom but no detailed information is offered. Master File presents a similar picture of the VF-31AX as an "aftermarket" customization that improves on the Siegfried. Where it differs from official material is that it claims the Siegfrieds were upgraded/repaired using a pre-existing stockpile of parts built for a planned upgrade to convert the VF-31 Siegfrieds into experimental 6th Generation technology demonstrators codenamed "VF-31X". Because it was a rush job, only part of the upgrades were made and the resulting aircraft had many issues, being seen as something of a flying trainwreck by the developer who insisted Xaos not refer to it as the VF-31X under any circumstances. Master File paints a picture of a 6th Generation VF development program as effectively stymied by a lack of sufficiently pure fold quartz. They've been doing that the entire time. That's literally the backstory of the VF-3000. It was an internal continuing development project based on the VF-1 Valkyrie that was started by Stonewell Bellcom and continued by Shinsei Industry after it was formed by the merger of Stonewell Bellcom, Shinnakasu Heavy Industry, and Shinsei Manufacturing in 2012. That kind of internal, independent development is also the origin story of the SV Works at General Galaxy. They were an independent design team meant to pursue development of VFs meant specifically for anti-VF use and ultimately ended up working for/with the Epsilon Foundation subsidiary company Dian Cecht to develop and manufacture new model VFs for Windermere IV's Kingdom of the Wind. (Though their development by/for Windermere were financed by Windermere's royal treasury who had a LOT of fold quartz to burn.) They've actually adopted several... it's just not universal because the various local New UN Forces subordinate to the emigrant governments are each effectively autonomous forces under a common banner and their local governments can equip them as they see fit. Some governments adopted the VF-24, some the VF-25, some the VF-31, and so on... some supposedly went all-in on unmanned fighters, and we know of at least one that totally abolished its own defense force.

OK, I am quite thoroughly satisfied with "A Space Adventure Hour".

For junior high and high school students yeah. IIRC, the series had a Sunday 11:00am time slot when it first aired in Japan.

So... "A Space Adventure Hour". I made it to exactly a minute and thirty-seven seconds before I needed to stop and take stock of what I was looking at, because my mind simply refused to comprehend. I want to see the blooper reel from this episode's production so very badly. That the cast keep a straight face while delivering this dialog in this way shows absolutely gargantuan self-control. I would be on the floor.

Oh, knock it off... it's not like Star Trek characters haven't been recast with a non-lookalikes before. As long as they're visually in the ballpark and can give a good performance, who cares? Anson Mount is the fourth actor to play Captain Pike, and none of them look the same. At least there's a semi-compelling explanation for why Pike and M'Benga don't see the warning for what it is. Having finished the episode, it's not bad. Not great, but not bad.

Sitting down to watch S3 Ep.3 "Shuttle to Kenfori".