A to Z Challenge: Jack Baker and Janice Em

Jack Baker

A couple of characters never shown on TV because they were part of the Sentinels books and comics.  Jack Baker was a hotshot young ensign who joined up with the SDF-3 expedition to Tirol.  He and another young ensign Karen Penn are supposed to be sort of a new generation of Rick Hunter and Lisa Hayes as he's the hotheaded pilot and she's more by-the-book.  Though it's never quite the same.  It's kind of like the new Star Wars movies where it's harder for older fans to care about Rey, Finn, and Poe as much as they cared about Luke, Leia, and Han.

Jack goes down to Tirol to fight the Invid when the SDF-3 first arrives.  He and Karen break away from their unit to find the old scientist Cabell and his young assistant Rem, who provide vital intelligence to help the REF win the day.

From there Jack and Karen wind up going with the Sentinels to free alien planets from Invid control.  On the mostly mechanized world of Haydon IV, Jack leads a team into the planet's core, where they find the intelligence operating the place.

Afterwards, Jack falls under the influence of the evil Invid scientist Tesla.  He becomes Tesla's go-fer basically.  Karen Penn realizes he's acting weird and to snap him out of it kisses him.  That works a little while but it's not until he's badly wounded in the battle on Spheris that Tesla's control of him ends.

He and Karen are caught up in the battle on Periton and Optera, but don't really do anything important.  Afterwards they're on the SDF-3 to go back to Earth when it makes its disastrous fold attempt.  Jack is the first to explore "newspace" but otherwise he and Karen don't do a whole lot.  They eventually join Dana, Marie Crystal, Sean Phillips, and Lunk in a new exploratory company.

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Janice Em

Janice Em is first introduced (chronologically) in the book The Zentraedi Rebellion.  She was made in Tokyo by scientists as an attempt to make an android that could pass as human.  Dr. Emil Lang decides to use her as a spy on the Southern Cross and as part of this she becomes a singing partner with Lynn-Minmei.  When Minmei decides to stow away with the SDF-3, Janice goes with her.

Lang sees Janice later and basically reprograms her so she'll go with the Sentinels to help him keep an eye on things there.  When the Sentinels are stranded on Praxis, she, Jonathan Wolfe, and Vince Grant use some local lifeforms to boost a Veritech into orbit and go back to the SDF-3 for help.

Later on Haydon IV Janice is drawn by the artificial intelligence running the place.  She finally finds out she's not a real girl.  Everyone else finds that out too and it weirds some people out--except for the kid from Tirol named Rem, maybe because he's a clone of the brilliant alien Zor.  I mean how weird is an android when you're a clone, right?  Kind of six of one, half-dozen of the other.

Janice goes with the Peritonian Buryk to help him figure out how to end the curse there.  Later on Optera she uses the shape-changing ability she acquired on Haydon to look like Lynn-Minmei and get close enough to TR Edwards that she can jump into a Genesis Pit with him and kill them both, thus ending the war.

So in the end she's the one who saved the day.  Suck it, normal people.

In The Shadow Chronicles it says she was built by the Haydonites as an "emissary" who's also an unwitting spy.  She has no relationship to Minmei but does sing a couple of Minmei songs.  So there's that.

A to Z Challenge: Invid

Invid Regent

The Invid are the main bad guys in the third Robotech series.  In the books at least they're mentioned before that but not seen until the Sentinels series.

In a way the Invid are similar to the Borg of Star Trek in that there's a hive mind controlled by a queen--and her consort.  Though instead of cyborgs, the Invid are more like slugs.  They come from the planet Optera and at the beginning they were just harmless beings content to feed on the Flower of Life that grew so readily on their planet.

Invid Regess 

It all changed when Zor showed up.  He soon realized the Flowers of Life could be harnassed into a powerful matrix, creating a substance called Protoculture.  To learn these secrets and to harvest flowers, Zor cozied up with Invid queen, who adopted a more human-like shape to impress him.

Invid Scientists

But eventually he spurned her and thus began the war between the Invid and the Robotech Masters.  To compete with the Zentraedi war machine, the Invid Regess and regent created machines or mecha of their own.

There's sort of a hierarchy of mecha that's seen in the third series.  The smallest and lightest are the Scouts.

Then there are the more heavily armed and armored Troopers.

Upgraded troopers are the Shock Troopers.

The Enforcers are like the boss shock troopers introduced midway into the third series.  They're pretty badass.

But the ultimate badasses are the elite mecha the Regess made for her human-ish children.

Invid mecha shoot energy bolts called annihilation discs and they have the wicked pincers that can crush a hapless Zentraedi or human.

You get to fight all those Invid mecha in the Invasion video game on the PS2/XBox with your Cyclone.  Since the Cyclone is a lot smaller, it's usually best to dance around the Invid, especially to avoid those claws. 

Ultimately as I've mentioned before, the Invid Regess is convinced to leave Earth.  She turns into a huge phoenix of energy along with the rest of the Invid on Earth and they all disappear.  She takes them to a new dimension called "newspace" but the Regess isn't happy there.  After a confrontation with Haydon she ultimately goes back to Optera in her original form to start over again.  Maybe this time she'll get it right.

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!

A to Z Challenge: Gloval, Henry

Even in the books there isn't tons about Henry Gloval's early years.  Basically he's from what was then the Soviet Union, he captained an aircraft carrier in the Global Civil War, and he was part of the team to explore the crashed SDF-1.  Then he was given command of the ship.

The SDF-1 was supposed to go on a shakedown cruise, but the arrival of a Zentraedi war fleet put the kaibosh on those plans.  Instead there was a struggle just to get the ship airborne when the gravity pods supposed to get the ship off the ground failed and they had to rely on good old-fashioned rocket power.

While Gloval was a good man and most of the time a decent captain, he made a couple of strategic errors.  The first was lowering the SDF-1 over Macross City before making its ill-fated space fold.  Instead of jumping to the moon, the ship (and most of Macross) ended up stranded by Pluto.  It was a move that forced tens of thousands of civilians to become refugees and killed thousands more.  But I suppose the excuse is that he didn't really know how the fold system worked; it was the ship's first jump.

Gloval had a plan for a counterattack around Saturn, but everything went to shit when the main gun wouldn't work.  It was only a clever plan by Lisa Hayes that saved the day.  It was Lisa again who saved the ship when Gloval set down on Mars and it was trapped by Zentraedi gravity mines.

Captain Henry Gloval

On Earth, Gloval finally found a home for the Macross refugees in Canada.  But when the Zentraedi attacked, he opted to use the new barrier system to shield the ship instead of the SDF-1's main gun.  When the barrier overloaded, it killed tens of thousands in Ontario and the refugees were stuck aboard the ship.

So those were not exactly the best moments, but otherwise he was pretty capable given the circumstances.  After the battle with Dolza, Gloval was sort of the unofficial president of Earth for a while during the reconstruction.  But he was getting up there in years, so Lisa Hayes was to command the SDF-2.  Which is why when Khyron's battlecruiser is heading towards the SDF-1 and SDF-2, Gloval, Claudia Grant, and the rest put Lisa into the only working escape pod.  And so Gloval is killed along with most of his bridge crew.

As something prescient for its time, there was frequently a conflict on the bridge about Gloval lighting up his pipe.  I don't think in the mid-80s it was still that big of a deal to smoke in military areas.

A to Z Challenge: First Couple: Roy Fokker and Claudia Grant

Roy Fokker & Claudia Grant

The saga of Robotech is largely based on the relationships between the characters.  Throughout the series there are a number of couples (or even triangles), but the first couple is Roy Fokker and Claudia Grant.

Roy Fokker

In a way they're the prototype of Rick Hunter and Lisa Hayes that would dominate the Macross Saga.  Roy is a fighter jock and Claudia is a tough bridge officer.  At first they didn't like each other but eventually they fell in love.  None of that is actually seen but it's recounted in the show and the books when Claudia is counseling Lisa Hayes about her feelings for Rick Hunter.

Roy Fokker used to work for Rick Hunter's father in his "flying circus."  Roy and Rick were pretty tight, like brothers.  Roy was Big Brother and Rick Little Brother.  But when the Global Civil War began, Roy became a fighter pilot, which Rick's father took badly.

Claudia Grant

Roy was part of the team to explore the SDF-1 after its crash and he immediately signed on to join the Robotech Defense Force.  He was the leader of Skull Squadron, his Veritech decorated like one of the old Tomcats of the Jolly Roger squadron on the USS Nimitz around that time in real life.  Roy is the one who invites Rick Hunter to Macross Island, where he gets caught up in the fold to Pluto and ultimately becomes a Veritech pilot.  Roy is also the one who convinces Rick to stop moping around and become a fighter pilot.

Roy and Claudia see each other periodically during the war, though it's hard with the frequent attacks and their schedules.  Roy is killed after the SDF-1's return to Earth.  His fighter is hit by some debris or something and while he's not obviously wounded, Roy has some internal damage.  He passes out in Claudia's quarters and later dies.

There's not really a lot about Claudia Grant before she boarded the SDF-1 except that her and Roy clashed horns before they eventually got together.  She works on the bridge with Lisa Hayes and the others and besides her duties, she's the one who keeps order among the other crew on the bridge as the oldest one besides the captain.

Claudia survives a while after Roy, making it through the battle against Dolza's forces and the reconstruction.  She's killed along with the rest of the bridge crew on the SDF-1 when Khyron's battlecruiser rams the SDF-1 and SDF-2.

Bowie Grant, Claudia's nephew

Her relatives Jean and Vince Grant are part of the SDF-3 expedition only recounted in the books.  Her nephew Bowie, Jean and Vince's son, is part of the 15th ATAC Squadron of the Army of the Southern Cross.  Bowie is a talented musician who falls in love with Musica, a clone who plays the "cosmic harp" that helps keep the clones of the Robotech Masters in line.  Bowie goes with Dana to find the SDF-3 and is reunited with his parents.  Then he gets stranded with them in another dimension until they finally get free.

A to Z Challenge: Exedore and Emil Lang

The Zentraedi were a race bred for war--except for Exedore.  Though by our standards he's a giant, by Zentraedi standards he's pretty much a dwarf at only about 30 feet tall.  In the Macross Saga he's the adviser to Breetai and the one most knowledgeable about Zentraedi history and legends.  Though later at least in the books we find out most of that history is bunk designed by the Robotech Masters to keep their troops in line.

When Breetai decides to join forces with the SDF-1, Exedore is the one who shrinks down and goes to negotiate.  It's funny when he tries to explain singing and starts belting out an off-key rendition of a Lynn-Minmei song.

He's on the SDF-1 during the final battle against Dolza and afterwards remains "micronized" to work with the humans on rebuilding and trying to integrate Zentraedi into society.  In the books at least he also works with Dr. Emil Lang on finding the secrets of Protoculture.

When the SDF-3 goes to find the Robotech Masters, Exedore, Lang, a clone of the original Zor named Rem, and an old Robotech Masters scientist named Cabell work on developing the new weapons used by the Robotech Expeditionary Force like the Cyclone cycles and a new Protoculture matrix.  Exedore also spends a lot of time on Haydon IV, studying its artificial intelligence.

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Dr. Emil Lang

The interesting thing about Dr. Emil Lang is that he's only shown twice in the TV series.  Once when they create the "pinpoint barrier" and then later when they create a barrier to cover the whole SDF-1.  There's never any explanation given to why his eyes are almost entirely black.

Most of his character comes from the book.  In those he's kind of the Einstein of Robotechnology. 

After the SDF-1 crashes on Earth, he's part of the team to explore the ship.  Interfacing with an alien computer, he gets sort of a brain boost that reveals a lot of the secrets of Protoculture to him.  It's also what makes his eyes almost entirely black.  He's on the SDF-1 when it accidentally folds to Pluto and stays with the ship to the end and helps create the SDF-2 and SDF-3.

With Exedore and Cabell, he helps to create a lot of the weapons used in the third generation series.  He's with the SDF-3 when it folds into another dimension.  He eventually gives himself another Protoculture boost that allows him to elevate himself to the same level as the Invid Regess and Haydon.  He doesn't have the same power as them but he's able to influence them so they don't destroy the universe.  And then Lang is gone.

In the books there are a couple of other connections not seen in the TV shows:  Scott Bernard works in his lab after the SDF-3 reaches the Robotech Masters' homeworld; Scott is supposed to be his nephew.  Lang's first assistant is a Dr. Lazlo Zand, who stays behind to study Dana Sterling and create the weapons used by the Army of the Southern Cross.  Zand got his own brain boost to try to be like his mentor.  But Zand doesn't even get a couple of appearances in any show; he's entirely a creation of the books.

In the same way, Exedore and Emil Lang are a Dynamic Duo pretty much created for the books.

A to Z Challenge: Dana Sterling

Technically Dana Sterling appears in both the first and second series of the Robotech show.  She first appears as the infant daughter of Max and Miriya Sterling in the Macross saga.  She's used as a weapon of sorts against some of the remaining Zentraedi on the factory satellite, who've never seen a baby before.  That the baby was made from a human and Zentraedi mating just freaks them out.

Baby Dana and her mother, Miriya

Then Dana is the focal character of the second series.  She's the leader of a Hovertank platoon who fight the Robotech Masters and their army of clones.  The thing is though, in Japan these are two separate characters, so in actuality it's not the same character.  Which is why as a baby she has blue hair and as a grown up she has blonde hair.

Grown up Dana Sterling

In the American series though I think they did this to help introduce some continuity.  Since they were separate series they couldn't include any of the main characters from the first series, so this way they could have someone with a familiar name to give the appearance of continuity.

The second series takes place about 15 years later.  Dana's parents have gone with the SDF-3 to try to stop the Robotech Masters, not realizing that the Robotech Masters are already coming to Earth.  By then the Robotech Defense Force has disappeared and the main military outfit in its place is the Army of the Southern Cross.  Dana is a lieutenant in the Southern Cross in charge of a platoon of Hovertanks.  The Hovertanks are tanks, obviously, that can turn into giant robots.  There's also an intermediate mode.

Dana in armor

They're the lamest of the vehicles but then I like planes a lot better than tanks.  Anyway, Dana gets caught up in uncovering the secrets of the Robotech Masters.  She also befriends a weird little creature called Polly that's a pollinator of the Flower of Life--the thing that makes the Protoculture all their vehicles use.  The pollinators helping to get the flowers growing is what ultimately brings the Invid to Earth.  So it's kind of Dana's fault; if she had just killed the thing the flowers wouldn't have spread.

Anyway, though Dana is only 17 she's given command of the 15th ATAC Squadron.  Though almost immediately she gets thrown in the stockade for a bar fight.  But as you'd expect it's her platoon that scores the biggest victories against the Masters, first by bringing down one ship by sabotaging its engines, then capturing the alien soldier Zor Prime, then breaking into another Robotech Masters' ship, and by crashing the Masters' flagship for good.

Dana, Hovertank, and Bioroid

When Zor Prime is assigned to her unit, Dana develops a crush on him, despite that he's pretty
obviously an unwitting spy for the Masters.  He eventually returns the affection, but in the final battle he puts her on an escape pod and then crashes the Masters' flagship into the ruins of the SDF-1, going down with the ship.

Dana is usually a brash, hotheaded leader, which in the books especially can be explained by her being half-Zentraedi.  Which of course in the Japanese version she's not half-alien nor are there any mentions of the Zentraedi.

After the Robotech Masters are defeated, a scout ship from the REF shows up and Dana and her platoon steal it to go find her parents.  She then goes to Haydon IV to visit her parents and her sister Aurora.  They're on the artificial planet when it suddenly starts zooming around the galaxy so that the entity known as Haydon can go through a black hole to the "newspace" the Regess has created and where the SDF-3 is marooned.

Dana doesn't do a lot there but at one point she's captured by a strange black mecha and soon is piloting it against her father in a Veritech.  There's something Freudian about that.  After the SDF-3 returns, Dana, Marie Crystal, Sean Phillips, Lunk, and a couple others form an exploration company that gets into its fair share of trouble.

In the books it talks a lot about her having special powers because of the Protoculture.  In the Zentraedi Rebellion, young Dana is experimented on by Dr. Lazlo Zand in a sort of Clockwork Orange kind of thing where she's shown a lot of violent imagery to try to stimulate her Zentraedi side.  But the experiment is broken up by Major Rolf Emerson, who cares for Dana once her parents are gone.

Later, after the final battle, Zand returns to try to steal Dana's Protoculture powers and winds up turning himself into a giant Flower of Life.  None of this is in the TV show.  Dr. Zand is entirely a product of the books; he never appears in any of the shows, though a lot is made of him in the books.  He was an assistant of Dr. Emil Lang who experimented on himself to boost his brain power.  He secretly made contact with the Robotech Masters before they arrived and kept the Army of the Southern Cross from learning about the Invid until it was too late.

In at least the "remastered" version of the series on Amazon Prime there are several gratuitous scenes with Dana in the shower.  One even shows a nipple!  I'm pretty sure the original American version didn't have that but the Japanese one probably showed a lot more.

On this blog a few years ago I mentioned how I bought an old Dana Sterling figure and took off the head to put on the head of a Black Widow figure and made it a Scarlet Knight figure.  Dana's red-and-silver armor was sort of the inspiration for the second version of the Scarlet Knight armor. So it just made sense.

A to Z Challenge: Cyclones and Crystal, Marie

Cyclone in Invasion video game

In the first Robotech series the Veritech fighters were the iconic weapon of choice for the humans.  In the second series it was Hovertanks.  In the third series although they often used new-generation Veritechs called Alphas, much of the series they relied on Cyclone motorcycles.

Original Cyclone toy (non-transforming)

"Shadow" Cyclone in robot mode

The Cyclone was pretty neat in that when the user was wearing the armor to go with it the motorcycle could transform, merging with the armor into a sort of robot mode.  The motorcycle part then was good for the trek Scott Bernard and company undergo from South America to Reflex Point, but when the Invid showed up, they could transform to fight the Invid troopers.

Being a motorcycle the Cyclone was a lot smaller than a Veritech.  In fact the Cyclone armor was stored in Veritechs of the REF so the pilot could use that if the Veritech was damaged or I guess just if a smaller vehicle was needed.

In the 2000s there were two Robotech video games for the PS2/XBox.  The first focused on the Macross saga and let you fly a Veritech.  The second was called Invasion and you got to use a Cyclone.  The crappy part of the game was you couldn't transform at will.  95% of the time you were in the robot mode with a couple of death races on the motorcycle to change it up.  It was a lot more fun in the first game when you could change at will.  Basically the Invasion game was HALO with Robotech stuff.

The Cyclone features a hand blaster that could be upgraded with a longer barrel.  It also had missiles on the back, legs, and arms.  In motorcycle mode the rider could hold the blaster and the missiles could be used pretty normally.  So it was a versatile weapon though not as powerful as the Veritech.  Because of its small size it did have more maneuverability than the Veritechs in fighting the Invid, which with a good pilot could be used effectively.

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Marie Crystal

Marie Crystal (or Marie Angel as she was apparently called in the Japanese series) was a pilot in the Tactical Armored Space Corps branch of the Army of the Southern Cross in the second Robotech Series.  When it starts out she's a young, inexperienced pilot but she goes on to be an ace pilot and commander.

Marie in an old comic book

After the first battle in space, her unit returns to Earth and gets in a bar fight with Dana Sterling's Hovertank squadron.  But later she and Dana sort of become friends.  When Sean Phillips of Dana's squadron saves Marie's crashing Logan Veritech, they begin to fall in love with each other.  She's skeptical of Sean early on because of his ladies man reputation; at one point an old girlfriend spoils a date and Marie drives off drunk before being saved by Dana and Nova Satori.

Marie and Sean survive the final battle with the Robotech Masters and then go with Dana to find the SDF-3.  While Dana goes to visit her family on Haydon IV, Marie and Sean join the SDF-3's Veritech squadrons.  There's some rivalry between those who in the Southern Cross and those who went with the REF as the Southern Crossers are kind of pissed that they had to fight off the Robotech Masters while the REF was out fighting the Invid Regent.

After the SDF-3 returns to Earth, Marie and Sean join Dana to create an exploratory firm that gets in its share of scrapes with the law.  It doesn't really say if Marie and Sean get married but I presume they're at least hooking up.

A to Z Challenge: Breetai and Bernard, Scott

As part of the prologue to the first of the books, we learn how half of Breetai's face was damaged.  Basically when Zor was being attacked by the Invid, Breetai led the counterattack and in the process took a shot to the face.  You'd think the Robotech Masters could have fixed the damage but I guess it was kind of a warrior pride thing not to fix it.

Anyway, Breetai was the commander of the Zentraedi forces through most of the Macross Saga.  Like all the Zentraedi he's a giant about 50 feet tall and as I mentioned he has damage to his face that's hidden with a metal cowl.

Though he's a tough warrior, Breetai was surprisingly cautious in handling the SDF-1 situation.  He had about a million ships at first, so he could have surrounded the ship and destroyed it at will.  The reason he didn't is that he was ordered to take it intact so they could find the elusive Protoculture matrix.

Alternately, Breetai could have taken Earth hostage and forced the SDF-1 to surrender.  But he didn't because that's not how the Zentraedi fight.  Their code of honor really prevented him from winning.

At one point Breetai decides to capture a human or two to study them.  When Lisa Hayes's "Cat's Eye" recon ship is captured, Rick Hunter and his two wingmen try to come to her rescue.  Breetai fights the robot-shaped Veritechs with his hands and a pipe.  He's sucked into space but the Zentraedi were engineered to survive in space for a short period of time, so he managed to come back into the ship and jump Rick Hunter and take his Veritech apart.

Breetai was replaced by Azonia as commander of the Zentraedi forces, but after her failures, he's put back in command.  And really the results are the same.  Meanwhile, exposure to human culture is causing his soldiers to defect to the SDF-1.

When Dolza decides to take out the SDF-1, Breetai joins forces with the humans because he knows Dolza will kill him and all "infected" Zentraedi who have been exposed to human culture.  After the humans win, Breetai remains in orbit near Earth.

He leads an assault on the Robotech "factory satellite," which is a giant factory to produce weapons.  With human assistance, Breetai destroys the last Zentraedi battle fleet and captures the factory to take it to Earth.

After the destruction of the SDF-1 and SDF-2, Breetai agrees to let his flagship (pretty much the last space fold-capable ship) be converted into the SDF-3 to lead the expedition to the home of the Robotech Masters.

In The Sentinels series, Breetai visits the Zentraedi homeworld of Fantoma and learns the truth about his past.  The Zentraedi were miners with their own history and culture before the Robotech Masters erased their memories, programming them to be warriors.  Breetai even sort of gets a girlfriend.  Ultimately he sacrifices himself to take out the Invid Regent, the head of Invid forces in that part of space.  So while he was a bad guy, he became a hero.  His girlfriend was pregnant with his son at the time, so a part of him lived on.

***

By contrast Scott Bernard was always a hero starting in the third series.  He was part of the Robotech Expeditionary Force that went to the Robotech Masters' homeworld.  Though he was only a teenager back then; by the time the REF was ready to "liberate" Earth he was grown.  Scott was part of the first REF wave trying to defeat the Invid.

That first wave met with disaster.  Scott survived, his ship crashing in South America.  His last orders were to meet at "Reflex Point," the big Invid hive in the North American Midwest.  While at first he was on his own, he eventually gained some comrades to journey with him.

Scott was kind of a tight ass, so it's a bit hard for him to team up with civilians who don't have the military discipline.  I already mentioned he had a girlfriend who died with the REF forces.  Her name was Marlene, which is what he calls Ariel for a while.

Other than his relationship with Marlene there wasn't really that much character building with him.  Maybe because he was mostly from space so there weren't really family or old friends he could meet along the way.  Mostly he's the unflappable team leader who's kind of a fish out of water. on an Earth that's become feudal and disorganized.

In one episode they meet a group of old Robotech soldiers (in the books it says they served with Admiral Gloval and then the REF while in the TV show it says they were in the Southern Cross) and Scott is dismayed by their cowardice in not fighting the Invid.  But eventually the old-timers get their old ship airborne to destroy an Invid communications tower.  In another episode a man named Dusty Ayres is killing Robotech soldiers after they refused to save him from Invid experiments.  Scott basically leads the posse to find Ayres, though in the end the man kills himself to stop the Invid.

Eventually the team makes it to Reflex Point and convince the Invid Regess to leave Earth.  Then Scott, Ariel, and some others take the Ark Angel to look for the SDF-3, which is stranded in another dimension.  I already mentioned Scott and Ariel hook up while she's in the brig and after the SDF-3 returns home they get married and live Happily Ever After.  As happily as possible.

There's a different take on this in the ill-fated Shadow Chronicles movie.  The beginning is sort of the same in that Scott joins an expedition to find the SDF-3, but instead of going to another dimension they instead find out that the aliens of Haydon IV are evil and planning to conquer the universe.  But that never got past the initial movie, so I wouldn't really consider it canon.  Other people do.

A to Z Challenge: Azonia, Ariel, and Annie

And so it begins!  Since I'm taking a lot of time on these entries, I'm going to do more than one thing on a lot of them.  Enjoy, phantom readers!

Azonia is part of the first series of Robotech, the Macross Saga.  She doesn't appear until about a third of the way through.  After numerous defeats and setbacks, the Zentraedi commander Dolza decides to put the female warrior Azonia in charge.

The Zentraedi are a warrior society that's strictly separated on gender lines, so Azonia commands an entirely female unit.  Putting her in charge is also kind of a big blow to Breetai, the former Zentraedi commander.  Getting replaced is bad, but by a female is 10,000 times worse!

Anyway, not a whole lot changes under Azonia's command.  Like Breetai, she's not willing to launch an all-out attack on the human-manned SDF-1 to find the elusive "Protoculture matrix."  Mostly she just watches the human ship.  The attacks launched under her command are mostly carried out by the evil Khyron the Backstaber.

Because she never really accomplishes much, she's eventually replaced--by Breetai.  In the climactic final space battle, she stays on Breetai's side against Dolza and the other Zentraedi.  Though it's not shown, her ship is shot down and crashes on Earth, where she's rescued by Khyron and becomes sorta his girlfriend.  They wouldn't show anything on American TV especially but the implication in the books is that they become lovers and she's sort of his second-in-command, which irks Khyron's crew, who aren't used to a female bossing them around.

Azonia and Khyron

Ultimately Azonia is at Khyron's side when he kamikazes his warship into the SDF-1 and SDF-2.  That's the end of her.  Seriously, this isn't a soap opera or comic book where people are coming back all the time.  And she wasn't really that important to bring back.

***

Ariel and Annie are part of the third series, known as Mospeada in Japan. In that the Invid Regess controls all of Earth.  She's obsessed with finding a perfect form for her and her race.  To that end she has "Genesis Pits" strewn around the planet to experiment with different lifeforms.

One of these is a sort of Lost World filled with dinosaurs.  When Scott Bernard and his team fall into this Lost World and defeat the dinos, the Regess starts to think that maybe humans might be worth more than slave labor.  So she creates a "simulagent," or an Invid agent who's made with human DNA to fit in.

Ariel

Ariel is the simulagent.  She winds up being found by Scott Bernard's team and to him she looks like his old girlfriend Marlene who died during the REF counterattack against the Invid.  Since she has no memory, he decides to call her Marlene.

"Marlene" was supposed to communicate with the Invid Regess, but something went haywire so that she had no memory of being human or Invid--she was a blank.  She did have a peculiar talent to sense the approach of the Invid, which would cause her to writhe in pain.

In one episode the team is trapped by a sandstorm and Marlene passes out.  Her teammate Rand went to find some water and passed out on an Invid Flower of Life.  He had a trippy dream where Marlene was abducted by a dragon and he went in pursuit of her.

Marlene and Scott Bernard have a friendly relationship, but things get more intimate when the team finds the abandoned city of New Denver.  Marlene and Scott explore the city together and the sees of love are planeted.

In another episode the team is separated with Marlene and Lancer going off together.  Marlene is confronted by another human-looking Invid, Sera and learns about the past of the Invid.  But it's not until the team gets to the Invid's main hive of Reflex Point and she's wounded that she realizes what she is by the green blood coming from a cut.

You green-blooded son of a bitch!

She runs away but later during the attack she manages to transfigure into pure energy and lead her friends into the main five to confront the Regess.  She tries to convince the Regess to stop the attack, but it's not until the human fleet assaulting Earth launches "Neutron" missiles to destroy the hive (and much of the planet) that the Regess decides to leave.

As for Ariel, she stays with Lunk and Annie while Scott Bernard goes to look for the SDF-3.  But when Scott comes back a few months later, Annie has gone and Lunk and Ariel have had a thing going on.  But Ariel goes with Scott on the Ark Angel to find the SDF-3.

She's imprisoned by the intelligence people on the Ark Angel where Scott tries to get her to tell them where the Regess is so maybe they can find the SDF-3.  While imprisoned, she and Scott actually fuck where they think cameras aren't watching--but they are.  D'OH.  Eventually with Ariel's help they find the Regess and SDF-3.  She and Scott survive and wind up getting married and living Happily Ever After.  I guess.

In the ill-fated Shadow Chronicles animated movie Ariel gets superpowers, sort of a cross between Nightcrawler and Jean-Grey of the X-Men.  She even gets a new costume complete with a boob panel!  I guess you can decide for yourself if that's an improvement.

Annie

Meanwhile, Annie is a little girl who's survived the Invid invasion of Earth.  Whether she's 17 or 13 or younger is a matter of some debate.  She's the third person to join Scott Bernard's team when they find her outside a South American city after her latest "boyfriend" kicked her out.

Most of the time she doesn't do a lot of fighting because she's a kid but she has some uses.  Like when they stage a concert as a distraction to steal Protoculture, Annie whips the crowd into a frenzy so they can escape.

Most of the time Annie rides in an old APC with Lunk, a former Southern Cross soldier who joins the team shortly after Annie.  He maintained an Alpha fighter in his barn that helps the team fight the Invid.  Annie tells Lunk he's going to be her new boyfriend but they never hook up.

Annie was with Rand and Scott Bernard when they fell into the Invid Genesis Pit.  At one point she's possessed by the Invid Regess to deliver a dire warning to the others that the earth is doomed.  Later she and Rand blow up an Invid living computer (basically a big brain) in an Invid fortress.

In one episode the team has a birthday party for her with mint chocolate cake, her favorite.  The team even puts on an air show and fireworks for her.

In another episode the team finds an old dam with a jungle the Invid have roofed over.  Living in the jungle are a tribe of people who used to work on the dam.  There's a kid among that tribe named Magruder and Annie helps him to become a man by helping him distract the Invid while the team opens up the dam to destroy the Invid hive.

Annie is going to stay with Magruder but they wanted her to do manual labor and junk so she returns to the team a short time later.  During the battle for Reflex Point, Annie drives Lunk's truck.  Later she, Lunk, and Ariel go to start a farm.  Again Annie doesn't really want to do manual labor so she goes back to find Magruder.  They get married and become "neogeneticists" who clone dinosaurs like Jurassic Park!