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.

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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.