A to Z Challenge: Hunter & Hayes

Rick Hunter and Lisa Hayes are the central characters of the Macross saga and also major parts of the follow-up Sentinels book series.  Their relationship (and Rick's with Lynn-Minmei) is the emotional core of the first series.

What's interesting when you watch the show is Lisa Hayes is actually the most well-developed character of the first series.  We learn that her father is an admiral and big wheel in the United Earth Government and generations of her family were military, which helped prompt her to join up.  When the SDF-1 lands on Mars, we learn about her prior relationship with Karl Riber, a peace-loving man who was killed on Mars when the colony went kaput.  He was another reason she went into the service, thinking she could get assigned to Mars to be with him.  So we know a lot of specifics about her background.

By contrast, we know mostly vague things about Rick Hunter.  His father was a fighter pilot who created a "flying circus" and didn't want his son to follow his footsteps.  Though ultimately Rick was coerced into becoming a fighter pilot.  He won the amateur flying championship for 8 years in a row.  That was pretty much all we know about him before the show.

When the show begins, Lisa is already the first officer of the SDF-1.  She wasn't part of the team that explored the ship, but she did help with the reconstruction of it.  She first meets Rick when he brings his airplane to Macross Island, interfering with the traffic and she yells at him.  He then calls her "an old sourpuss" despite that she's only 24.

They have an acrimonious relationship early on.  Things start to change when she goes down to the base on Mars.  When the Zentraedi trigger gravity mines to trap the SDF-1, she has to trigger an overload in the generator on the base to blow up the mines.  Rick is sent in to rescue her, though she doesn't really want him to; she wants to stay where Karl Riber died.  But Rick saves her anyway.

Then Lisa is in a Cat's Eye recon plane after the SDF-1's radar is taken out when she's abducted by the Zentraedi.  Rick goes in to save her.  His Veritech is destroyed by Breetai and he and Lisa are captured by the Zentraedi.  They're forced to demonstrate a kiss for the Zentraedi, which Lisa has to make a direct order.  When they're broken out by Max Sterling they explore the Zentraedi ship and bond a little.

But just as they're maybe going to talk about their feelings, Lisa goes to Earth to try to convince the government to negotiate for peace.  But her father refuses and keeps her down on Earth instead.  During the battle with Dolza, Lisa is in Alaska Base when much of the planet is razed.  Meanwhile, Rick's Veritech is damaged and comes down to Earth, where he picks up Lisa's call for help.  She rides in his lap as they escape the exploding base.

During the reconstruction, Lisa took to cleaning his apartment, but he still wasn't sure about his feelings for her.  It was only after the destruction of the SDF-1 and SDF-2 that they hooked up for good.

Rick was a civilian at the start of the series but he was involved in the first battle on Macross Island because his buddy Roy Fokker let him sit in a trainer Veritech before the Zentraedi attack.  When Roy was called away, Rick fell asleep in the plane, where he was woke by Lisa yelling at him to get in the air.  After nearly being killed in the air he crashed back on Macross, nearly killing singer Lynn-Minmei before saving her.

When the SDF-1 folded to Pluto, Rick and Minmei were caught outside the ship in his plane.  He barely coaxed it back onto the ship, where they wound up shipwrecked in an unused part of the SDF-1 for weeks before they were discovered by a construction crew.

Roy, with Minmei's encouragement, convinced Rick to become a fighter pilot because they needed someone of his skills and he didn't really have anything better to do.  Not much use for stunt pilots on a warship surrounded by enemy ships.

After a few battles, Rick was promoted and given command of two pilots:  Max Sterling and Ben Dixon.  They managed to survive quite a few battles, including boarding Breetai's ship to rescue Lisa Hayes.  Back on Earth Rick is shot down inadvertently by a missile strike ordered by Lisa, which she feels worse about than he does.  Over Ontario Ben Dixon is killed and then not long after Roy Fokker is killed.  Lisa tries to comfort him, but as per usual things go sour.

After Roy dies, Rick takes command of the Skull Squadron until after the end of the war.  Shortly after the start of The Zentraedi Rebellion, Rick is promoted to admiral and works on coordinating responses to the Zentraedi attacks while Max Sterling takes over the Skull Squadron.

The wedding

In The Sentinels, Lisa is given command of the SDF-3 while Rick is in command of the ground/air forces.  But after the SDF-3 is damaged by the Invid and stranded, they join up with the Sentinels to fight the Invid Regent.  Lisa captains first the alien-made Ferrago until it's destroyed by the Invid.  Then later she captains the Ark Angel through to the end.

Rick goes through a crisis of confidence in the first couple of books.  By the time of the Sentinels series he's in his 30s but doesn't really want to give up being a pilot.  So he tries to give up command, which annoys Lisa and annoys his friend Max Sterling, who has to cover for him when they're fighting the Invid so he doesn't get killed.

But after leading a ground mission on Karbarra, Rick starts to get his groove back and accepts his fate.  When they're stranded on the dying world of Praxis, Lisa starts to work with the Amazon warriors on her fighting skills.

She and Rick are captured on Garuda and forced to ingest the planet's atmosphere that causes them to trip out.  The others eventually rescue them and take them to Haydon IV to revive.  They get caught up in the battle on Periton and then go down to the final battle on Optera, where they confront the evil General TR Edwards and are ultimately saved from certain doom.

After the Sentinels campaign, Lisa gets pregnant and gives birth to their son Roy.  A few years later all three of them wind up stuck in another dimension with the SDF-3 until the end of that, when they finally get home to find out that Earth doesn't really need them anymore.  There's a new source of energy with new ships and everything but while Rick is teaching their son to fly and being a stay-at-home dad, Lisa is preparing to captain another SDF into the Andromeda galaxy.  Presumably her husband and son will go along.

In the third series and the Shadow Chronicles movie, Lisa gets short shrift.  There's a lot of talk of "Admiral Hunter" but they're only referring to Rick.  No mention is made of Lisa when really they're supposed to be co-commanders of the mission.  Maybe some latent sexism at work.

Captain Lisa Shaw in Sims 2

As a Fun Fact, in 1995 when I wrote the first draft of First Contact, the character of Captain Lisa Shaw was obviously based on Lisa Hayes.  I mean she even has the same first name!  And she's a space captain.  She has military parents (both of them!) and she often doubts herself.  And she was in a love triangle involving people under her command.  Though my Lisa has green eyes and shorter, darker brown hair.  So there, totally different!