A to Z Challenge: Zors

The last entry ironically involves the beginning for the whole Robotech saga.  To bind the series together Carl Macek came up with the idea of Protoculture, which needed someone to be behind its discover.  Enter, Zor.  Through some of the other entries I've already talked about Zor, the genius who isn't really shown in his original form and yet who drives the whole saga.

Zor & Flower of Life

He was a scientist on Tirol who was somewhat of a rebel genius.  He went to Optera and met the Invid and discovered that the seeds of the Flower of Life could be turned into a powerful energy called Protoculture.

To learn more about the Flowers of Life and their power, he seduced the Invid queen or Regess.  She even adopted a human-like form to please him.  And he repaid her by taking the Protoculture back to Tirol, where the leaders there became the Robotech Masters and tried to destroy the Invid with their army of Zentraedi warriors.

With what happened, Zor started to realize the mistake he'd made.  And so he made a plan.  He coerced the Robotech Masters to let him build the SDF-1.  Then he went around to nearby planets to seed them with the Flower of Life.  But the Invid were always a step behind him to pay him back for what he'd done.

They finally caught up to him and killed him, though not before he sent the SDF-1 to Earth.  I think in the books it's mentioned that Zor, like Khyron the Backstabber, abused the dried Flowers of Life to get high.  That's part of what gave him the vision to send the SDF-1 to Earth.

After Zor died, his remains were taken back to Tirol.  Not to be buried or cremated.  Instead the Robotech Masters tried numerous times to clone him so they might regain the knowledge sent away on the SDF-1.  But none of their experiments came to fruition--to their knowledge.

Before the Masters left Tirol, they began growing another clone that they would allow to grow more naturally.  This eventually became Zor Prime.  While he looked like the original, he didn't really have the memories and so the Robotech Masters basically put him on the line as a soldier in a red Bioroid.  They finally decided to let him be captured with an implant in his brain so they could see and hear what he saw and heard.  Besides being a spy the hope was he would figure out where the Protoculture Matrix was, but by the time he did, the matrix was breaking down and creating Flowers of Life that would bring the Invid.

Zor Prime

Zor Prime is captured by Dana Sterling's Hovertank squadron, though for a little while he's debriefed by Nova Satori and the Global Military Police.  Eventually they decide to put Zor into the 15th, where Dana Sterling develops a crush on him that isn't reciprocated for a while.

When the 15th infiltrates the Robotech Master flagship, the Masters switch Zor's programming back on and he briefly turns traitor before his emotional connection with Dana allows him to break the Masters' control.

Though Zor and the 15th escape the Masters, they return later and this time Zor kills the Masters.  He stuffs Dana into an escape pod before he crashes the Masters' ship into the remains of the SDF-1.  In the show it says that this is what releases the spores of the Flower of Life to bring the Invid to Earth while in the books it says mystical "Protoculture Wraiths" put up a shield to keep the spores from being obliterated.  Since Zor is supposed to be a genius the book option would make more sense.  The show option is like Oppenheimer forgetting to carry a 1 so the atomic bombs dropped on Japan don't do anything.

Interestingly, the Zor Prime story is similar to what John Scalzi uses in the second Old Man's War book where they clone some scientist hoping he'll retain some of the scientific genius of the dead guy but when he doesn't show a sign of it they put him in the army and then he starts remembering stuff later on.  I'm not saying it's plagiarism but just something similar.  Maybe Scalzi read the Robotech books or watched the show.

Rem, not R.E.M.

Meanwhile in The Sentinels there's another Zor clone in Rem.  He grows up under the tutelage of the old scientist named Cabell but he doesn't have any idea that he's Zor's clone.  Cabell basically stole some of Zor's DNA to make the clone and raised it pretty much as his son.  Rem goes with the Sentinels and is captured on the planet Garuda by the Invid.  Exposure to the atmosphere of the planet gets him to start tripping and starts to unlike Zor's memories.  When he's finally rescued he starts to realize that he's a clone.  He and the android Janice Em become sort of a couple until she dies to stop TR Edwards.

After the defeat of the Invid Regent and Edwards, Rem goes around studying the Flowers of Life and trying to reseed the Invid homeworld of Optera.  He's on the SDF-3 when it's stranded in another dimension.  He winds up stranded with Lynn-Minmei in that dimension along with the SDF-3's fold engines.  Maybe not really the ending he deserved but symbolically I think it was sort of showing that Zor's time was over and the universe was moving on from him.  And with Minmei giving birth to original Zor it's kind of the circle of time or something.  It's definitely a Freudian thing that Rem is in a way his own father.

A to Z Challenge: Yellow Dancer

Yellow Dancer

Since the Robotech shows were originally made in Japan, it shouldn't be a surprise they were a lot more grown up than the typical American cartoon.  There were a lot of adult relationships, though there wasn't explicit sex or anything.  Still, a lot of what we'd call "adult situations" these days.

Perhaps the most adult situation was Yellow Dancer.  In the third series Yellow Dancer was the biggest human star around since Lynn-Minmei.  She performed mostly in South America, where the Invid presence wasn't quite so heavy.

The thing is, Yellow Dancer isn't a woman!  In reality "she" is a man in drag named Lancer.  Yellow Dancer was just a way for Lancer to stay under the radar with the Invid and their human sympathizers.  The idea came after Lancer was shot down during the Invid invasion and a woman named Carla found him wounded and dressed him as a woman to avoid capture.  (Because there were no female Veritech pilots?  Marie Crystal would beg to disagree.)

When Scott Bernard and Rand show up in a club where she's performing, she eventually helps them escape some bad guys and as Lancer joins with them.

Yellow Dancer's popularity comes in handy a few times as Scott Bernard and company head north to Reflex Point.  One time she puts on a concert to distract a city's police so the team can steal some Protoculture.  Yellow Dancer can open some doors that wouldn't open otherwise and get undercover for valuable information.  And it also helps to pay the bills a little too.

In the episode where Lancer runs into Carla again we find out they had sort of a Casablanca-type romance, complete with him jumping off a train instead of riding off into the sunset with his lover.

When they meet again Carla is marrying a scumbag businessman/mayor named Donald who makes money by selling people fake maps over a mountain range guarded by the Invid.  The people who buy these maps never come back alive to tell anyone they're fake--at least until Carla tells Lancer about it.

In a weird twist, Carla decides to stick with Donald because he sacrificed his daddy's old fighter planes to help the team escape the Invid.  So even though he killed dozens of people indirectly with phony maps she's going to stick with him because he helped to save a few lives?  I don't think one really balances the other but there's really no discussion of the ethics of this.  In the book it says she took a gun with her so that maybe she could shoot him later if she decides he hasn't changed.

After the Invid Regess creates two human "children," the female one called Sera spies Lancer bathing and singing and is smitten with him.  Several times she avoids killing him and even saves his life during the battle at Reflex Point.

When they go to New York to find Protoculture, Lancer meets up with a flaming director named Simon and agrees to put on a show for people.  But when the Invid start trashing the place, Lancer has to help get people to safety.  Again Sera helps to keep him alive.

In a victory concert after the Invid leave, Yellow Dancer reveals her real identity--and mass not giving a shit ensues as Al Sirois would say.  At the moment who would really care that a "female" singer is really a dude in drag?  At least that's the book version.  In the TV version people boo at first.  Except for Sera, who remains with him on Earth after the rest of the Invid leave.

Lancer stays on Earth in the last book while Scott Bernard goes off to find the SDF-3.  He goes back to New York to rejoin the troupe of actors there.  Sera stays with him but she starts fading away until like a Jedi she just vanishes.

Lancer stays in New York but later it says that he dies flying a relief mission to a disaster area.  Kind of sucks for him then.

In 2013 there was a new "movie" packaged on DVD with The Shadow Chronicles called Live Love Alive.  It's basically a clip show as before his big final concert Lancer is talking with a female reporter and recounting the team's adventures.  It's kind of goofy as a lot of what he recounts in clips he wasn't even there for, like the encounter with Jonathan Wolfe.

It also muddies the continuity a bit further as it says Lancer was a member of the REF who came to Earth with Wolfe--who has a full fleet instead of a single ship--to attack the Invid before Scott Bernard's group arrived.

Lancer doesn't recount most of his relationship with Sera--like when she spared him in the Rockies and New York--because he's hiding the fact that she's alive.  In the end after saying goodbye to the team he rides off to a cabin by a lake where Sera is waiting for him.  And she's pregnant!

I guess that was a better ending for both of them than in the books at least.

A to Z Challenge: eXo Squad

I have to do a little fudging for X.  So sue me.

In the early-mid 90s there was a toy line from Playmates called Exo Squad.  They were little figures with transforming body armor.  Sort of like that big construction machine Ripley gets into in Aliens.  I didn't really pay attention to those.  By that time I wasn't really paying much attention to toys in general as Transformers, GI JOE, and Star Wars were all dead or mostly dead.

Around 1995 though the Exo Squad line issued a bunch of Robotech toys.  Most of the toys were the "Destroids" or civil defense mecha that could not transform.

These came in two sizes, about a 3-inch size and a 7-inch size.  These included:

Excaliburs, which had a big gun for each arm and missile batteries.

Gladiators, which had sort of Battloid-like hands and missile batteries.

Spartans, which had big round missile battery arms.

Raidar-Xs, which were anti-aircraft mecha with two smaller guns on each arm.

The 7-inch toys also included Zentraedi power armor

Invid Scout ship

and Robotech Master Bioroids

Robotech Master Bioroid

In addition to this they came out with some larger models:

Battlepods, the common Zentraedi mecha.

Officer's Pod, the Zentraedi mecha used by Khyron the Backstabber.

Invid Shock Trooper, the elite mecha of the Invid.

"Veritech" Hovertank, the Hovertank used by Dana Sterling and her platoon in the second series.

Veritech VF-1S, the Skull Leader one flown by Roy Fokker and then Rick Hunter.

While the Hovertank did transform at least from Gladiator to Battloid, the Veritech was stuck in Fighter mode, which is pretty disappointing.  While the Exo Squad figures were smaller than the old Robotech ones, I crammed Rick Hunter and Lisa Hayes into my Veritech, reenacting their escape from Alaska Base.

Another disappointment is they didn't make the Cyclone.  That would have seemed a natural fit but they never came out with one of those.  While they made the mecha, they did not make any Robotech characters as figures to go in them.  I did buy an Exo Squad figure or two on sale at Target around that time to put in in them.  I still have one at least:

This old site has a complete list of the Exo Squad toys, though not all have pictures.  According to that site, it was Playmates who came up with alliance, not Harmony Gold the shitty owners of the Robotech property.  Which makes sense with how inept Harmony Gold is; I mean, they've been half-assedly been working on a live action movie for like 25 years now and the closest that came to it was the piece of shit Shadow Chronicles animated movie.

Anyway, I had all of the Exo Squad Robotech toys at one point.  I still might have most of them somewhere.  The Destroids I kept in their boxes and hung on the wall for decoration for a while.  I had the boxes of the bigger ones for a while but I think I eventually threw them out.

A to Z Challenge: Wolfe, Jonathan

What's interesting about the character of Jonathan Wolfe is the writers of the books and comics basically reverse-engineered him.  Technically his first appearance is in the third generation.  Scott Bernard and company come upon Wolfe's base, where he's scoring victories against the Invid.

Scott is almost instantly enthralled with Wolfe, whom he sees as a hero.  He's all too eager to sign up with Wolfe to fight against the Invid.  But soon Scott is lured into a trap.  Too late he finds out that Wolfe isn't really winning victories against the Invid; they're basically letting him keep some supplies and stuff in exchange for human lives.

Wolfe realizes what a coward he's been and sacrifices himself to help Scott and company get away.

So his beginning is also his end.  But in the books, starting with #19, The Zentraedi Rebellion, the writers go back to detail Wolfe's past.  He missed the SDF-1 expedition but survived Dolza's Rain of Death along with his wife Catherine and son Johnny.

After the war he's transferred from Albuquerque to Cavern City in South America.  His wife and son aren't really happy with the move but he enjoys the challenge of raising up a new unit.  One of his lieutenants has the last name Bartley.  He's the father of Rook Bartley, one of Scott Bernard's group.  It's all connected, right?  Rook's father and Wolfe go to Mexico City, where they get some parts to fix up some old tanks.

The tanks come in handy when Wolfe's unit--the Wolfe Pack--fight against Zentraedi rebels.  During one such occasion, though, they get dosed with a rare disease that causes some members of the unit to flip out and try to kill people.  The disease spreads to all of Cavern City, leading to the city being put on quarantine for a while.

Wolfe in old comic book

Wolfe and family eventually get transferred back north, but Wolfe doesn't want a desk job, so he agrees to go on the SDF-3 expedition with his Pack.  Shortly after the SDF-3 defolds, Wolfe is assigned to go pick up a stray ship, in which is the singer Lynn-Minmei.  They become infatuated with each other.

But their relationship goes south when he chooses to go with Rick Hunter and others with the Sentinels.  After the Sentinels are stranded on the dying world of Praxis, Wolfe goes with Janice Em and Vince Grant in a Veritech boosted to the atmosphere by some local organisms, back to the expedition headquarters on Tirol.  The maniacal General TR Edwards won't let Wolfe and company have a ship to rescue the Sentinels so with some covert help from Dr. Emil Lang, Wolfe steals the SDF-7 to rescue the Sentinels in the nick of time.

While he was there he tried to see Minmei but she wasn't having it.  When she's abducted by Edwards, he stages a fake wedding and she basically tells Wolfe to fuck off.  So he accepts Lang's invitation to take a prototype ship back to Earth.  It was supposed to be a round-trip, but it turned out one-way for him.  He arrives after the Robotech Masters have been defeated and the planet is pretty well defenseless.

Dana Sterling and her platoon are able to commandeer Wolfe's ship to head back to Tirol while he continues down the path of alcoholism and becoming the broken down loser he is in the TV show.  The circle is complete!

Some of the book stuff doesn't really jive with the TV episode as at one point Scott says he was part of the Wolfe Pack, which he wasn't in the books.  And there's some confusion in the TV show about who exactly sent Wolfe back and his mission because of course this was really a Japanese series totally unrelated to the Macross series.  In the TV episode his last words are the names of his wife and kid but the book adds Minmei to the list.  Because of what I just said about the series not really being connected.  And I don't think the books existed when they first dubbed it.

Anyway, this worked a lot better to give a character a tragic backstory than the Star Wars prequels did.

Sue Graham

Interestingly it wasn't the only time this happened.  Near the end of the third series Scott Bernard's team comes across a woman named Sue Graham.  She is recording the battle around Reflex Point for Admiral Hunter's perusal.  After showing the team to a "synchro cannon" she's killed by the Invid.

The books created a whole tragic backstory for her too.  While in the TV episode she claimed to be an intelligence agent, the books made her a journalist who started by covering the Zentraedi rebellion in Book 19.  Later she goes with the expedition to Tirol sensing it's a big story.

After the Invid are driven away by the Sentinels, Graham becomes the personal photographer for Rick Hunter.  She comes onto him and while Rick rejects her, his wife thinks he's getting too cozy with Graham, so she has Max Sterling transfer Graham to the Jupiter Group going to Earth before the main fleet's arrival.  It's not quite as deep as Wolfe's story but along the same lines.

A to Z Challenge: Veritechs

For me anyway, Veritechs were the most awesome thing about Robotech.  Sure there was a good story and the Cyclones were neat and the Hovertanks were OK, but Veritechs were all the shit.

The original Veritech fighters looked sort of like F-14 Tomcats with the swing wings and twin tails.  But most Veritechs only had one crewmember while Tomcats had two.  And of course they turned into giant robots!

The Veritechs had three modes:  Fighter, Guardian, and Battloid.  Fighter is pretty obvious--it's the airplane mode.  The Battloid is the giant robot mode.  The Guardian is an intermediate between the two where the top is the fighter but the tail folds up and the legs and arms descend so it looks kind of like a big bird.

The Veritechs also have a few different modes that are mostly based on how many laser guns it has on the head.

The VF-1A is the base model.  There's only a single gun on the head and only one crew.

The VF-1D is the training model.  It has two laser guns on the head and carries two people.  The D is the first one Rick Hunter flies and accidentally trashes part of Macross City with.

The VF-1J has two guns on the head and it's for flight leaders basically.  Rick Hunter upgrades to a J once he's the leader of the Vermilion group.

The VF-1S is the squadron leader one with four laser guns on it.  This is the one Roy Fokker flew that was decorated with the Jolly Roger markings.  And it's also the one Hasbro used for the original Jetfire Transformers toy!  Only Jetfire had red trim, not yellow.

Original Jetfire, a VF-1S

In the Battlecry video game there was also a VF-1R recon model.  It's mostly like a VF-1A model but with extra cameras and stuff.  I still have the toy of it on my shelf that I bought from MediaPlay back in 2004 or so.

In one episode Rick Hunter takes out a prototype that has a lot of extra armor and weapons for a solo patrol.  It winds up getting blown up by a Zentraedi recon ship.

Shortly before the big space battle with Dolza's fleet, the armored Veritechs are introduced.  These have rocket boosters, extra armor, and extra weapons.  Rick Hunter takes one out to save Lisa Hayes on her way to Earth.  Jetfire came with the armor that you could snap onto his body to make him an armored Veritech.  I still have some of it on my old one.

In the Sentinels series and then in the third Robotech series they introduced the Alphas and Betas.  Alphas were like the original Veritechs but sleeker with more delta-shaped wings instead of the swing wings.  They still did all the other stuff like Veritechs.

Alpha

Beta

Betas were smaller and boxier.  They could attach to the rear of an Alpha in fighter mode for extra firepower and power.  Maybe extra cargo hauling too.  Definitely would not help maneuverability.  The Beta had its own Battloid mode but not really so much of a Guardian mode.

Combined Alpha & Beta

Early in the second series there's a sort-of Veritech called the Logan.  They were smaller and instead of turning into a robot it basically just had a plane mode and Guardian mode.

Logan

The Southern Cross also used another sort-of Veritech called an AJAC attack chopper.  They were more like helicopters than planes like the other Veritechs.

AJAC

The AJACs (or AGACs since they were called Auto Gyro Attack Choppers or something in the show) were introduced midway through as a new weapon that was supposed to turn the tide--but didn't.  I'm not sure what good helicopters were supposed to do in space.  Marie Crystal was one of the first pilots to get one, replacing her destroyed Logan.  They were pretty much what the Southern Cross used in the air from then on out.

A to Z Challenge: United Earth Governments

It's interesting to note that the beginning of Robotech and the graphic novel Watchmen actually share a premise:  an alien presence causing destruction brings the warring human powers together for peace.  Though Robotech and Watchmen came out at about the same time, the Japanese series Macross existed a little before that, so I guess they got the idea first.

In Watchmen the former hero Ozymandias turns supervillain by staging an alien attack to fool the superpowers into averting nuclear war to work together against a common threat.  In Robotech the arrival of the SDF-1 is actually a very real alien invasion.

In the books it's mentioned that if the SDF-1 hadn't arrived, some of Earth's leaders might have pulled an Ozymandias of their own.  But with the SDF-1's arrival they didn't need to.  Instead the politicians of the warring factions bound together and formed the United Earth Defense Council.  It was a united government for Earth that focused on restoring the SDF-1 and preparing for a Zentraedi invasion.  Not that they really planned to.  For the leaders of the United Earth Defense Council that was something they figured would never happen in their lifetimes, like how our current "leadership" feels about global warming.  It was just a way for them to get power.

Anyway, the Zentraedi did come and the SDF-1 wound up jumping to Pluto.  Which for the UEDC was a good thing as the Zentraedi had no interest in Earth itself.  Thus for them the problem was pretty much solved.  They actually told the media and such that there hadn't been any invasion by aliens; the SDF-1 was sabotaged by some rogue element and the people of Macross all killed.  The area was made a no-fly zone because of deadly radiation so no one could go see the damage.  Problem solved!

At least until the SDF-1 came back to Earth.  They were at first ordered away from Earth but eventually Captain Gloval brought the ship down anyway.  Still the government didn't want to break the news to the people of Earth, not until Gloval began flying the SDF-1 over cities to alert people that they were in fact not dead.

After meeting with Gloval and Lisa Hayes, the UEDC ordered the ship to leave again and given what happened, they were probably right.  The Zentraedi didn't want Earth.  Maybe if the SDF-1 had just surrendered they would have gone away forever.  Or the Robotech Masters might have sent them back later.  So in a way they were right, though for the wrong reasons.

One problem for the UEDC is that when the SDF-1 left it took most of the Robotech technology with it, including the genius Dr. Lang.  So there wasn't a lot of preparation they could do except for the boondoggle of the "Grand Cannon."  It was a Starkiller Base type thing, a huge gun powered by Earth itself.  The obvious problem is the gun was built in Alaska and so it couldn't hit a lot except from that angle.  The books mention there were supposed to be mirrors built but there wasn't time for that.  There was also a second one being built in South America but it didn't get too far.

The original United Earth Defense Council was destroyed when Dolza razed the planet.  After a couple of years with Gloval and the SDF-1 basically in charge, a new government, the United Earth Government, was formed.  This was supposed to mollify the Robotech Defense Force and Army of the Southern Cross, but eventually, once the SDF-3 left with most of the RDF leadership, the remainder of the RDF was turned into the Global Military Police and the Southern Cross became the UEG's military.

The UEG was wiped out after the Robotech Masters and then the Invid came.  With the Invid in charge there were only city-states, no organized government.  Elements of the REF tried to form a new government once the Invid were gone and while the SDF-3 was stranded in "newspace" a new government was formed, though one less corrupt than the old regimes.

In the books the head of the UEDC--Alfredo Russo--survives the first war but becomes a mindwiped henchman for Dr. Lazlo Zand.  After Zand dies, Russo wanders around with no memory, pretty much a zombie.

A Fun Fact is in the TV show written on stuff is "UN Spacy" which I guess is what the United Earth Defense Council and Robotech Defense Force was actually supposed to be called.  Or something.

A to Z Challenge: TR Edwards & Tesla

TR Edwards

TR Edwards is another of those characters who exists only in books/comic books.  He never actually appears in the Macross saga, though he was supposedly around.

In the books he first appears when the team goes to explore the crashed SDF-1.  He and Roy Fokker were on opposite sides of the Global Civil War and there was sort of a rivalry between them.  Once the decision is made to rebuild the SDF-1 TR Edwards goes to work for the new world government.

Edwards doesn't go with the SDF-1 into space.  He stays on Earth and is working in Alaska Base with Lisa Hayes and her father during the epic battle with Dolza.  While Lisa is saved by Rick Hunter, Edwards isn't seen and thus left to die.  He loses half his face but he survives and winds up in South America with Anatole Leonard.

In the book The Zentraedi Rebellion, Edwards becomes a double-agent in the RDF, feeding Leonard information on the Zentraedi rebels so the Southern Cross can hit them and gain notoriety.  In exchange for this, Edwards is eventually promoted to a general of the Southern Cross and weasels his way onto the SDF-3 expedition with a squadron of Veritechs called Ghost Squadron.

When the SDF-3 arrives at Tirol, Edwards leads his squadron in a strike against the Invid there.  He later uses his squadron to capture an Invid living brain, which he uses to help co-opt the Expeditionary Force's head council.  At the same he's working with the Invid Regent to destroy the Sentinels.  Edwards mostly helps by denying the Sentinels any more support from the humans and Zentraedi on Tirol.

At the same time he starts dating singer/movie star Lynn-Minmei mostly because she was Rick Hunter's girlfriend and he somehow thinks having Hunter's sloppy seconds will allow him to "win" their one-sided rivalry. At first Minmei thinks he's great for helping her set up a club on Tirol and stuff but eventually he becomes like one of those abusive boyfriends in a Lifetime movie and she finally realizes he's a bad guy.

Meanwhile Edwards uses his influence over the council to get new warships built and staffed with people loyal to him.  He tries to take over the Zentraedi mining operation on Fantoma, but by then there's nothing much left to mine.  The Zentraedi take off with the ore that's left and kick Edwards's forces's asses in a battle.

Later, Edwards is exposed to the planetary council in one of those cliched things where he said something awful on tape and it was played for everyone to see.  The council is smarter than MAGA heads so they don't justify it as "locker room talk" or call it "fake news."  Edwards goes on the run, fleeing to Optera with help from the Regent.

When the Regent is killed, Edwards takes over all the remaining Invid forces on Optera.  This is just as the Sentinels and REF arrive at Optera to arrest him.  He uses the Regent's "genesis pit" to create monsters with faces of familiar characters like Rick Hunter, Lisa Hayes, Roy Fokker, and Lynn-Minmei.  Which was something that sort of happens at the end of the first Hunger Games book years later.

Edwards gets into a fist fight with Rick and Lisa while his forces are being wiped out.  He's got the upper hand when Minmei seemingly shows up.  Except it's really the android Janice Em in disguise.  She jumps into the pit, carrying him with her and they both die.  An inglorious end for an inglorious bastard.

***

Tesla's Before picture

Tesla is also part of the Sentinels book series and never appears in any TV shows.  He starts out as a fairly generic scientist for the Invid regent.  Tesla is part of a group that captures people from other alien races for the Regent's zoo.  But when the aliens overthrow their captors, Tesla is taken captive.  He becomes part of the Sentinels group who oppose the Invid regent.

Tesla actually comes in pretty handy on a few worlds the Sentinels visit.  On Karbarra he convinces the Invid forces to let him land and sneaks in a contingent of Sentinels to help free the planet.  Later on Spheris he co-opts some of the Invid forces and uses them to fight those loyal to the Regent.  With the chaos the Invid are driven off the planet.

Which each planet they visit, Tesla samples from the fruit of the Flower of Life.  The fruit makes him more evolved and powerful, until he's pretty much like a supervillain.  He gains superpowers like being able to manipulate not only Invid but humans and other aliens.  He bends Jack Baker and a few others to his will to do his bidding for him.  With this mental control he's able to fool the Sentinels for a while into not knowing what he's up to.

After the battle on Spheris, though, he takes his loyal forces to Optera to fight the Regent.  He suffers heavy casualties but drives the Regent back.  But then Edwards shows up to attack his forces from behind.  Trapped between a rock and hard place, Tesla accepts Edwards's invitation to go attack the Sentinels on Periton.

Then he makes a critical mistake by eating the fruit of Periton.  The fruit, the first that bloomed after Optera was deflowered, reverts him back to a normal scientist.  He realizes too late he should have gone to Earth next and eaten the fruit there.  Then he might have become a god.

Instead, he and the Peritonian Sentinel Buryk sacrifice themselves to save that planet from a deadly curse:  a ghost battle that has raged around the planet for thousands of years.  So while Edwards went out like a bitch, Tesla somewhat redeems himself.

A to Z Challenge: SDFs

The main prize in the first Robotech series is the SDF-1, which stands for Super Dimensional Fortress.  Why is it called this?  Because it can fold through dimensions and it's a fortress, I guess.

SDF-1, Cyclone, and Jetfires

The ship was designed by the alien scientist Zor as his personal transportation.  When he's killed, he has some loyal Zentraedi send the ship to a planet he saw in a vision:  a placid blue world far removed from the fighting.  You know, Earth.

The SDF-1 crashes on Earth and is badly damaged.  The Zentraedi on board are all killed.  Humans board the ship and decide to rebuild the ship as a way to unite all of humanity in a common struggle.  Besides the crash damage, much of the ship was designed for the giant Zentraedi so it had to be rebuilt and scaled down for the humans who would be using it.

That's part of the reason that when Rick Hunter and Minmei crash in part of the ship, no one finds them for weeks:  there's a lot of it that simply isn't in use at first.  This is helpful after the disastrous fold to Pluto because there's plenty of room in the ship to transplant most of Macross City into the SDF-1.

Besides this, two aircraft carriers that were anchored off the island are affixed to the sides of the SDF-1 to become sort of like arms when later the SDF-1 has to transform into a humanoid shape so it can fire its main gun.

The main gun is the ship's primary weapon, as you'd expect from the name.  It's a tremendous amount of energy unleashed between the twin booms that are at the front of the ship in its "cruiser" mode or on the shoulders in the "Attack" mode.  Though after the fold to Pluto the weapon can only be used in the Attack mode.  Also, after firing it the ship is basically drained of power for a couple of minutes until it can recharge.  That way the SDF-1 couldn't just keep blasting the Zentraedi like a video game until they were all dead, right?

After the fold to Pluto the fold engines disappear and are replaced by a weird energy that becomes a shield.  But to add more complications the shield can't be used at the same time as the main gun.  Because otherwise it'd be invincible!  You always have to have an Achilles heel.  Or two.

With the aircraft carrier arms, Lisa Hayes comes up with the "Daedalus Maneuver," which is basically punching an enemy ship.  A ramp in the front of the aircraft carrier (which totally have ramps in the front, right?  No.) is lowered and mecha launch a bunch of missiles into the enemy ship.  And like in Star Wars those missiles hit something vital and blow it up.

After the battle with Dolza's fleet, the SDF-1 lands on Earth forever.  It briefly gets airborne when Khyron attacks and launches one last burst from the main gun before Khyron's cruiser hits it and blows it up.

Along with it goes the ill-fated SDF-2.  The SDF-2 is an identical twin that was reverse engineered from the SDF-1.  It was supposed to have the SDF-1's engines installed, which is why the two ships were together when they were destroyed.  Lisa Hayes was supposed to command an expedition to Tirol to negotiate with the Robotech Masters.

SDF-3 and Alpha fighters

Instead, Breetai's Zentraedi flagship was scaled down and refitted into the SDF-3.  Because of that it can't transform like the SDF-1; it was stuck in the "cruiser mode." The SDF-3 doesn't really get to do a whole lot.  It jumps to Tirol to find the planet abandoned by the Robotech Masters.  After an attack by the Invid it pretty much just sits there for like 20 years, until it's time to go, when it jumps into another dimension.  In the other dimension its fold engines disappear but they eventually find the original SDF-1 engines and swap those in.

SDF-4

The SDF-4 was the first class of ships built after the humans took over Tirol.  If there was an SDF-5 or 6  there was really no mention of them in the books.

The SDF-7 is stolen by the Sentinels after their original ship is destroyed on Praxis.  The Sentinels rename it the Ark Angel.  After the Sentinels campaign it returns to Earth and is boarded by Scott Bernard and some others to find the SDF-3 once the Invid have left the planet.

Shadow Chronicles Ark Angel

There's an Ark Angel in the Shadow Chronicles movie but apparently it's not the same ship.  Probably not all that different.

It's weird that in the last book it says they're building an SDF-4 to explore the Andromeda galaxy.  Shouldn't it be SDF-8?  Whatever.

A to Z Challenge: Robotech Masters

This 4/20 let's talk about some guys who like getting high on plants.  Not Cheech and Chong but the Robotech Masters.

Robotech Masters

The Robotech Masters were basically ordinary politicians on Tirol, a world distant from Earth.  There was sort of a quasi-Roman society there when the rebel scientist Zor first discovered Protoculture.  With that, the Robotech Masters saw the chance to elevate themselves.  They used the power to make themselves more powerful by enslaving the Zentraedi of neighboring Fantoma.  They wiped the memories of the Zentraedi and programmed them into giant killing machines.  With Zor's help they armed them with a bunch of ships and mecha and set them loose to conquer the galaxy.

But eventually Zor turned against them and sent the Protoculture matrix to Earth on the SDF-1.  Before he himself died.  Thus the secrets of Protoculture were lost and the Masters faced a crisis:  without Zor or the matrix, eventually they'd run out of the Protoculture.  And meanwhile they still had the Invid nipping at their heels.

Zentraedi full size and micronized (not to scale)

So they dispatched a huge armada to Earth to get the matrix back.  The hope was the Zentraedi would bring the ship back right away and things could get back to normal for the Masters.  When that doesn't happen, the shit really hit the fan.

With supplies of Protoculture short, the Masters decide to go to Earth themselves, but conveniently they don't have enough fuel to fold there, so they have to go into suspended animation and go by conventional means, which takes over 10 years.

By then Earth is ruled by the Southern Cross.  The Robotech Masters destroy Earth's pitiful space defenses and then begin sending down their army of clones.  The Robotech Masters' army uses human-shaped robots called Bioroids that have a few different styles and fly around on little armed platforms.

Robotech Master clone trooper

All the work done on the ships of the Robotech Masters is done by clones who work in groups of three.  Because the Flower of Life has three leaves and grows in threes the number 3 is very important to the Masters, so every group is a triumvirate.

Ultimately the Robotech Masters are too late and the Flowers of Life bloom, bringing the Invid.  The Masters' ship is destroyed and they are forever erased.

In a way the Masters kind of remind me of the Guardians in the Green Lantern comics.  Their skin isn't blue (it's more of a mauve I think it is) but they're bald-ish and they wear robes and they pretend to be wise and shit while dispatching minions to do their dirty work.

While most of the Robotech Masters are killed in the second war, the oldest of them--the Elders--barely survive.  They join with the entity Haydon, leading him to the Flowers of Life on New Praxis (Optera) and then to the new Protoculture matrix on Tirol.  Their hope is Haydon will give them the power to reconquer the universe, but instead he imprisons them in a bubble of time where they're stranded for all eternity.  Sucks for them.

A to Z Challenge: Quadrano Battalion

The Quadrano Battalion was a unit of female Zentraedi in the first Robotech series.  They were led bv Miriya Parino, at least until she left to become human-sized.

Instead of the standard Battlepods, the female Zentraedi had "power armor."  It's sort of a hunchbacked human shape that was a lot more maneuverable and better armed than the pods.  But maybe there wasn't as much armor.

Quadrano Power Armor

Anyway, the power armor was pretty badass.  Which is probably part of the reason Miriya was unbeaten for so long.  The Quadrano Battalion did a lot of damage to the Veritechs of the SDF-1 and maybe they could have turned the tide if their commanders weren't so timid.

After the war, the female Zentraedi were spread all over Earth.  In the 19th book, The Zentraedi Rebellion, we learn how one of them hooked up with the despot-to-be Anatole Leonard, who used her as a dominatrix for a while, until she got knocked up and fled.

This Zentraedi and some of her former comrades banded together to form a new unit.  Using salvaged parts, they made remote-operated power armor suits at first just to spread regular destruction and terror.  Then they started spreading a rare disease in Mexico and South America.

Miriya goes to find them and accidentally kills her former best friend and the half-human/half-Zentraedi baby.  After the last of the rebel Zentraedi are rounded up, Miriya faces off against two of them in a duel along with Breetai.  Guess who won?

That was pretty much the end of the Quadrano Battalion.

There seems to be some dispute as whether it's "Quadrano" or "Quadrono."  Tomato, tom-ah-to.

A to Z Challenge: Protoculture

Protoculture is the McGuffin of the Robotech series.  It's what the American writers used to help piece together the three Japanese shows into one epic saga.  So, what is it?

Flowers of Life

Basically Protoculture is a power derived from the seeds of the Invid Flower of Life.  The alien scientist Zor discovers the power it generates and there's something else:  that power has a transformative nature.  Which is used by Dr. Emil Lang to create the Veritech fighters that change from planes to robots and later the Hovertanks and Cyclone cycles.

In the first series, the Zentraedi are looking for the ultimate source of power:  a special Protoculture matrix Zor created.  It is the only one in existence and thus the Robotech Masters desperately want it back.  Which is why they direct Breetai and later Azonia to capture the SDF-1 intact so they can find the matrix.

Flowers blossoming

Sort of a convenient plot device is that Dr. Lang never looks in the engines of the SDF-1.  That turns out to be where the matrix is hiding.  The matrix even supposedly has a way to avoid detection so no one can find it.

The Zentraedi haven't been exposed to emotions and have no understanding of Protoculture, so they think kissing, music, and movie special effects are Protoculture weapons.  Part of what brings humans and Zentraedi together is the aliens think humans have a much better understanding of Protoculture than we do.  The only two humans who really understood anything about it were Dr. Emil Lang and his assistant Lazlo Zand, both of whom I've mentioned before.

In the second series then, as the Robotech Masters attack Earth, the matrix finally sends out spores that are pollinated and turn into the Flower of Life.  That then brings the Invid to Earth to enslave the planet.

The Zor clone Rem creates a new Protoculture matrix from the reseeded Optera to fuel the REF fleets.  But when the Invid Regess is convinced to leave Earth, she collects all the Invid and neutralizes almost all the Protoculture on Earth.  Only the SDF-7, which shows up afterwards, is still operational.

Free of the Protoculture at last, Earth eventually has to develop alternative fuels.  Like:

I'm pretty sure though in the Japanese shows there's no mention of Protoculture.  Nor is it ever really seen except as the canisters they use in Mospeada as fuel.  It's just something made up to provide some motivation for the bad guys in all three series.  Pretty clever.