Tansy Rayner Roberts's Blog, page 39

Robotech Rewatch 60: A Couple of Vines and a Coconut

Keep your scanner tuned to this station. Robotech is back!

EPISODE 74 – Annie’s Wedding

The rebel bikie flyboy bikie gang are running low on protoculture, which is bad news, so they decide to transport their gear to Reflex Point via raft.

Annie is totally into this plan, and Rook put her enthusiasm down by pointing out that this isn’t some silly jungle movie where all you need is a couple of vines and a coconut. I don’t know, Rook. We’ve covered just about every other genre lately. A little Tarzan action would liven things up!

Lancer volunteers himself as lookout on the grounds that he’s a freaking pop star and doesn’t know how to build boats. (I restrained myself from making a joke about him not wanting to break a nail, but then Lunk did it for me, so oh well).

While everyone else is working hard, Lancer then fulfils his civic duty of taking his shirt off and having a swim. It’s kind of nice that the show is offering half-naked men instead of just putting the girls in shower scenes (or nude bathing scenes) but on the other hand, come on, it’s a cartoon, does it really need sex appeal?

Later, while sunbathing, Lancer is attacked by a stranger, and some awkward editing makes it look like a tree fell on him, but actually that was Rand’s tree, elsewhere along the river.

A bunch of strange, angry bearded people attack the campsite and manage to herd all the rest of the space bikie gang into a single net trap, which is quite impressive.

Turns out their abductors are a sect of river-worshippers who somehow reverted to the spear-wielding dark ages in the single generation since the Invid invaded.

That’s some commitment to a superstition-and-spear society. Maybe they’re historical re-enactors who let it all get out of hand.

As the bikies fix the dam (AKA the river god) and appease their captors, chirpy ten year old McGruder turns up, delighted that he has caught himself a wife in the spirit of his cultural tradition of just recently. To everyone’s merriment and delight, the wife in question is Lancer. In a sack.

Oh Lancer, the gender-queering never ends when you’re around. If only it wasn’t used for cheap jokes most of the time.

LANCER: It was an honest mistake, young man. Now hurry up and let me out of this bag!



Everyone laughs at the ten year old, which is kind of mean, since he’s obviously upset. Even Annie laughs, which is a bit rich given her own outlandish romantic disasters, but she at least notices that McGruder is sad before everyone else does, and she feels a bit bad about it.

Being Annie, she decides to solve the problem in the creepiest way possible by dressing up in her best frock and beads, and seducing the kid.

Look, we’ve talked about this before. I don’t know how old Annie is supposed to be. I’ve seen her referenced as a ‘teenager’ in Robotech meta, but the way she is drawn and her general babyish behaviour pretty much always comes across as a 7-12 year old who thinks she’s in the body of Marilyn Monroe. Now at least she’s found herself a lad of approximately the same height and romance-obsession, which is slightly better than watching her crack on to adult men, but STILL CREEPY.

I mean, she talks like a 40 year old divorcee, which is to say any given character in Gossip Girl, but she looks like something out of Peanuts.

It’s so awful that the appearance of the Invid can only be a relief.

McGruder decides to prove his manhood (ugh) by attacking the Invid, which does involve swinging on a vine or two. Notably, he is rescued at one point by Lancer, who has got the hang of the whole vine-swinging thing pretty easily.

At the height of the battle, Annie steals Rand’s Cyclone, straps on some goggles and lets McGruder ride pillion, and races into battle.

ANNIE: McGruder, we’re going to make a man out of you even if it kills us both!”

It’s a slightly awesome moment, even if it ends in disaster, with the two kids crashing the bike and collapsing in the jungle while the grown ups lure the Invid towards the “river god” and crush them by exploding the dam in their general direction.

The story winds up with a really super disturbing ceremony in which the grateful tribespeople stage a WEDDING for the two kids, and bikie crew sail off into the sunset on a tribal flotilla. Having left Annie behind. Because, you know, married. In a random tribe.

What is this, a Doctor Who companion leaving story?

“With her gone, us big kids can get on with the serious business of freedom fighting.” Rand tries to convince everyone he’s not going to miss the child they left behind with complete strangers.

This weekly rewatch of classic animated space opera Robotech is brought to you as bonus content for the Musketeer Space project.

Thanks to everyone who has linked, commented, or sponsored me.

You can support the blog at Patreon.

SF Women of the 20th Century & More

MUSKETEER SPACE IS NOW COMPLETE. In 15 months I wrote 62 chapters, a bonus novella, 20 Musketeer Media Essays and rewatched 73 episodes of the classic space opera cartoon Robotech. You can still read it all for free right here on the blog.

My plan for the rest of 2015 is to return this to the eclectic blog it used to be before Musketeers ate my brain: a space for me to write about superheroes, science fiction and fantasy, women’s history, links, reviews, Doctor Who themed birthday parties, and the occasional Mighty Feminist essay.

By supporting my Patreon, you are making it possible for me to balance my fiction writing with a healthy output of thoughtful, critical, snarky geekbloggery. I’m at my best as a writer when I can afford the time to do both.

My theme for the rest of this year is SF WOMEN OF THE 20TH CENTURY. I’ll be blogging about various women (real and imagined) who have contributed to the century that saw science fiction shaped, defined and blasted off into space. I hope to be writing about other topics too – but that depends on which milestones we hit! Regular blog features like the Issue #1 comic reviews, Friday Links etc. will continue in their usual haphazard way.

The more milestones we reach, the more blog content is unlocked – I’ll be adding more milestones as we go. You may notice there’s the possibility of a new web serial in our future… hopefully not too distant.

Those of you who supported Musketeer Space – thank you with all my heart. I’d love you to stick around and continue to support my Patreon into the future, but I also send kind happy thoughts with you if you decide it’s time to ride off into the sunset and pass your pledge on to some other deserving creator. Crowdfunding is awesome and we’ll always have Paris Satellite. xxx

Jessica Jones is My Hero

So, I’m pretty excited about the upcoming Netflix series of Jessica Jones. Everything I hear about it suggests that it’s a solid adaptation of the brilliant, highly original Alias comic that allows Jessica to be the angry, flawed character that she is. And they’re doing that scene where Luke Cage is on fire, so that’s pretty great.

I’m starting to get a bit cranky that so much of the publicity is pairing images of Krysten Ritter with comic-art-Jessica-as-Jewel rather than comic-art-Jessica-as-Humphrey-Bogart but I have confidence that doesn’t reflect the priorities of the show.

Jessica Jones, if you haven’t come across the character before, is a hard drinking, chain-smoking, angry private detective who delves into the darker, murkier side of the Marvel Universe. She’s a classic noir hero with a 21st century edge, and it’s amazingly empowering to see a female character who’s just – so – well, flawed and mean and grumpy.

Grumpy female characters are my favourite thing.

She’s also a former cheesy superhero, who defines herself by having walked away from that life. Her social ties, friends and former friends and people-who-hate-me-now are mostly connected to the Avengers in some way.

After Alias ended, Jessica took on the role of superhero reporter in The Pulse (written by her creator, Brian Michael Bendis), in order to work through her unexpected pregnancy in a (slightly) less dangerous job. Her relationship with Luke Cage brought her to the New Avengers title (also written by Bendis) despite her being a non-combatant and it’s there that I became even more attached to Jessica.

She is fantastic as a grumpy noir detective, but I like her even more as a new mother struggling with the expectations and needs of that very uncomfortable role. I love it when fiction acknowledges that pregnancy and childbirth don’t automatically make you inhale the Perfect Mother Handbook and that a lot of the basic work required of early parenthood is less than romantic or fun.

Jessica pointing out to Luke that she doesn’t magically have any better idea what to do with a baby than he does simply because she’s a woman is one of many, many great scenes between the two of them.

One of the biggest, most anticipated coming events in the mighty, apparently-unstoppable Marvel Cinematic Universe is that the next Captain America movie is going to cover the Civil War storyline. Fans of the MCU are preparing themselves for Cap/Bucky feels, and Cap/Tony feels, and being outraged at favourite characters acting wildly out of character because of political violence and betrayal, which is pretty much what happened in the comics.

Fans have also been sideeyeing the list of actors/characters appearing in that overstuffed movie. I’ve read fan critique on how there are too many characters for one movie, and how there aren’t nearly enough to get across the epic nature of it, and is there going to be enough Cap/Bucky with everything else going on? I’ve heard analysis about why the story won’t work with or without Spider-Man, or why we won’t be seeing The Wasp in costume, or how everyone’s really worried that Chris Evans hasn’t signed up for enough movies and maybe they’re going to kill off Captain America…

I’m thinking about Jessica Jones and Luke Cage. Because for me, while the central Civil War storyline was indeed terrible and relied too heavily on superheroes being awful to each other because Tony Stark told them to, the comic that I felt dealt with the emotional and professional fallout most effectively was New Avengers, and the characters whose story was most pivotal in that were not Captain America or Spider-Man or Iron Man.

For me, it was all about Jessica Jones and Luke Cage.

The central conceit of Civil War is that a Superhero Registration Act is brought in, demanding that all costumed vigilantes (and crucially all people with superpowers regardless of their vigilante status) register their legal identities with the US government. The superhero community falls into two sides – that of ‘law and order and paternalistic safety’ led by Tony Stark (Iron Man), and that of ‘freedom, privacy and fuck directly off’ led by Steve Rogers (Captain America).

The problem with the story is that the pro-registration side is impossible to sympathise with. The government does not merely demand that all superheroes give up their names and other private information into a database (which is in itself made of suck but vaguely defensible). They require that every registered superhero/costumed vigilante work for them, arresting friends and colleagues and doing anything else that the US government requires of them.

Registering means signing up to be a government-controlled weapon with no freedom to quit, to look for employment elsewhere, or to make your own ethical choices as to how your powers are utilised.

New Avengers (written again by Brian Michael Bendis) came into its own as a comics title during and after Civil War, ostensibly because it was “Cap’s team” but in reality because of the Luke and Jessica story. Parents of a new baby, neither of them wanted to register, and so they ended up living as criminals on the run from their own government and some of their closest friends. They both had strong political and personal reasons not to register – Jessica in particular had quit costumed vigilantism years before, and had just had a FREAKING BABY. She didn’t want to a) be a superhero under any conditions b) be forced into employment as a superpowered government enforcer or c) trust her government to decide whether there was a maternity leave option.

Both of them struggled with life on the run from the Registration Act, and the constant guilt at the situation for their baby daughter, at the danger and the risk. But what I loved most about this story was that we were shown all the awkward parts of the constant negotiation – and how Luke and Jessica felt differently about the political vs. personal, and how they brought different baggage to the situation. Luke’s political idealism vs. Jessica’s pragmatism caused many negotiations and fights – Jessica’s role as primary caretaker of their baby compared to Luke’s relative freedom of movement took a toll on their relationship as her energy levels faltered and eventually crashed. Oh and Jessica’s best friend, Carol Danvers, is the poster woman for government compliance in this story, and we get to see the strain on their friendship because of all this as well.

There was no easy or right choice for them to make to keep their family safe, or to stay out of the fight, which made their agonies all the more credible. In one crucial scene, Luke Cage is arrested for breaking the law by being an unregistered superhero while buying baby formula. Parenting during a political apocalypse is hard work, y’all. Three destroyed safe houses later, Jessica cracks at one point and yells at her judgmental, conservative mother, pointing out that she knows they are raising Dani under awful conditions, but that they have never had any better options. They’re doing the best with what they can, and that’s such a powerful message to see.

I’m completely not the right person to analyse the racial implications and tensions of Luke Cage’s role in the post-Civil War fallout (though I would love to read any analysis others have done on this topic) but it’s hard to miss the visual imagery of Luke Cage as a large, physically intimidating black man with superpowers, being treated as a public criminal by the authorities for trying to protect his family in non-violent ways. His rage and frustration with the situation is an important through-line of New Avengers, and he has so much more at stake than the various white superheroes who are generally talked about as the main characters in this arc.

I’m pretty sure we’re not going to see any of this in the Captain America movie. Which is a shame, because the central core of the Civil War storyline featuring the ‘big hitter’ famous dudes was the least interesting and least effective part of it. (we’re also not going to see Sue Storm walk out on her husband and children because she’s exhausted by being on the wrong side of history) But I’ll be interested to see if the movie ‘event’ filters into the TV series that come after. Less so with Agents of SHIELD – because Civil War in the comics basically gave us a year or two in which all SHIELD agents were suddenly hugely unsympathetic assholes with a really creepy fascist agenda yes even Black Widow – and certainly not for Season 1 of Jessica Jones which will be out well in advance of Captain America 3, but for the Netflix original series to come in later years. Daredevil Season 1 showed the economic hardships that the poorer corners of New York City were still suffering years after the destruction caused in the original Avengers movie. Perhaps we’ll get Jessica Jones vs. Civil War in a year or two…

Superhero comics are normally not the medium in which to read interesting, nuanced stories of early parenthood. But New Avengers gave me that. Jessica Jones is my hero because it is marvellously subversive and exciting to read about an un-romanticised female noir detective. She is my hero because she brings sarcasm and crankiness and pragmatism where ever she goes, all essential survival traits in a superhero universe. She is my hero because she stood up and said that actually, being a superhero is a terrible job (knowing when to quit is in itself a superpower).

Jessica Jones is my superhero because she represents one of the most realistic depictions I’ve seen in pop culture of a woman dealing with with new motherhood and all the weird identity-shifting mental gymnastics that comes with that job when it’s never something you really imagined for yourself (or even if it was).

Stay cranky, Jessica! I’ll be watching.

Musketeer Space Part 62: We’ll Always Have Paris

It’s the very last Musketeer Day! This has been an epic adventure for me and I really appreciate everyone who came along for the ride with me, whether you were reading, supporting, retweeting or just generally squeeing at me. Special thanks to Grant for making my Musketeer Space title banner, and to my proofers who are working on the ebook.

Letting go of my sweeties is a lot harder than I thought it would be. But, you know, WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS SATELLITE.

Final reminder: if you want to receive the complete ebook of the (lightly edited) web serial to read on your e-reader device, please sign up as a Patreon supporter at the $1 level before the end of this month. I won’t be making the complete ebook available for general sale any time soon. If you sign up for the $2 level, you will also receive a collection of Musketeer essays from this blog and elsewhere.

I will be rebooting my Patreon page next month to acknowledge the end of the serial and announce new projects – and I’ll give all my supporters a nice comfortable window in which to remove or change their pledge, given that Musketeer Space is DONE.

For now, enjoy the epilogue to Musketeer Space. xxxxxx

Start reading Musketeer Space from Part 1

Missed the last installment? Track back to Part 61

Read a festive Musketeer Space prequel, “Seven Days of Joyeux.”

Main Page & Table of Contents

Chapter 62 – We’ll Always Have Paris

Seven months after the abrupt end of the Second Sun-kissed War, Regent Lalla Louise Renard Royal and her husband, Prince Consort Alek of Auster, became parents to triplets. Royal baby fever had been running high for months, and Gossipnode all but exploded with the anticipation of this happy event.

For Dana and the other Musketeers, life did not change at first, though security details for the royal family immediately became more complex. There were more changes on the horizon, to be anticipated.

“Three of them,” said Athos dourly, as the Four Inseparables gathered in the Abbey of St Germain for the age old tradition of wetting a baby’s head. Three babies meant a lot of drinks for anyone currently signed to service of the Crown. “Fifteen years, maybe less, and our jobs will be to keep those three royalings out of every dodgy nightclub, rave, bubble club and whatever the hell teenagers invent to do to themselves between now and then. Never mind Musketeers. We’ll be the sex and drugs police.”

“Isn’t that already your job?” Aramis said archly. “I wouldn’t worry about it, darling. We’ll be long gone by then.”

Porthos coughed. “Are we going somewhere?”

Aramis pointed a long, elegant finger in her direction. “Don’t pretend that fancy Chef Coquenard hasn’t asked you to marry him.”

Porthos rolled her eyes. “I haven’t said yes. Besides, I can be married and still a Musketeer, it’s not against the law.”

Dana brought a new tray of drinks to the table, and caught the tail end of the conversation. “Is this the part where you convince us you’re going to retire to a quiet life as an Abbot somewhere in the outer System, Aramis? Because no one actually believes that.”

“I’d be brilliant at it,” Aramis protested.

“Surrounded by priests and intellectuals all day, honour-bound not to seduce any married ladies you come across?” Dana actually scoffed. “Yeah, right.”

“What about you, Dana?” Porthos asked, to keep the peace.

“Oh, I’m always going to be a Musketeer,” Dana said, without hesitation. “Forever.”

Athos clinked his glass solemnly against hers. “As is only right and proper.”

“There’s more to life than being a Musketeer,” Aramis insisted. “There’s a whole wide universe of possibilities out there.”

Dana and Athos gave her identical expressions that clearly told her that she was 100% wrong, and they feared for her sanity.

“For example, Athos,” Aramis went on, continuing her thesis. “I can definitely see you in your more mature years, taking up an aristocratic estate somewhere. Not La Fere, of course, something more modest for your noble needs. Only one library. Perhaps you’ll find yourself raising a young ward whose chin is suspiciously similar to your own…”

Athos glared at her. “Never going to happen,” he growled.

Aramis fluttered her eyelashes at him. “You know Chevreuse and I talk, right? I’m perfectly aware of that trip to Peace you took last time Treville gave you leave ‘for your health’…”

“Mind your own damn business,” Athos said, and knocked back half his drink.

Dana was only half aware that their bickering continued, rising and falling in the background like the energy hum of a musket-class dart in need of recharging. She had stopped paying attention to them, because Special Agent Rosnay Cho had just walked into the bar.

Ro’s flight suit was pale turquoise, her long black hair spilled down her back as usual, and her manner was all business. She did not acknowledge Dana’s presence at all, but went straight to the bartender.

Dana did not even pretend not to watch the other woman as Ro very deliberately scratched the scar on her face, then lay three fingers alongside her own chin.

On high alert, Dana surveyed the bar. “Those three,” she whispered. “In the corner. “Don’t they match the description of the terrorists who tried to disrupt the press conference last week?”

Rosnay Cho knocked back a shot of something highly alcoholic at the bar, then turned around and left with a smirk on her face, still not making eye contact with Dana. She didn’t have to.

“That woman,” breathed Aramis. “She’s so useful to have around.”

“Hands off, I saw her first,” said Dana, with a touch of pride in her voice.

Porthos glanced casually across at the three men in the far corner. “How are we going to do this? Call for backup, evacuate the bar? Everything by the books?”

“Sure,” said Athos, draining the last of his drink, and wiping his mouth. “Or we could just flip the table, draw our blades, see what happens.”

Aramis shot him a fond smile. “As always, Athos, I’m in awe of your strategic brain.”

“All for one,” said Porthos, grinning so fiercely that it was amazing the bar had not already emptied at the disturbing sight.

Athos groaned. “Must we, really?”

“And one for all!” crowed Dana.

“Aren’t we beyond team chants and catchphrases?”

“Shut up, Athos. Play nice.”

“Flip the table already.”

It was, they decided later, somewhere in the top three of best bar fights ever, resulting in six arrests, three dislocated shoulders, and only two major sword wounds. If there was more to life than being a Musketeer, Dana ever didn’t care to find out.

Galactic Suburbia Episode 124

Episode 124 can be downloaded/streamed here or on Itunes.

An all culture consumed special (with a little awards chat just for old time’s sake)



Hugo Awards update – how we voted. If you’re voting, get in before the eleventh hour!

World Fantasy Awards: Aussies on the ballot.

What Culture Have we Consumed?



Alisa: The Almighty Johnsons; Wayward Pines

Alex: Arrow season 1; Beauty, Sheri S Tepper; Poseidon’s Wake, Alastair Reynolds; Of Noble Family, Mary Robinette Kowal

Tansy: Uncanny Magazine No. 5: “Midnight Hour” by Mary Robinette Kowal, “Woman at Exhibition” by E. Lily Yu, “Ghost Champagne” by Charlie Jane Anders, “Catcall” by Delilah S Dawson, Natalie Luhrs “Ethics of Reviewing”. Black Canary #1. Glitch.

In August we will be reading:

James Tiptree Jr: The Double Life of Alice Sheldon, Julie Phillips

“Houston, Houston Do You Read?” and “Your Faces, O my Sisters, your Faces filled of Light!” by James Tiptree Jr.

Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook, support us at Patreon and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!

Musketeers: The Next Generation [2004]

And now, the management would like to present the final essay in the Musketeer Media Monday series. Tune in on Wednesday for the final installment of Musketeer Space.

Musketeers: The Next Generation (2004)

[AKA: D’Artagnan is the Best Dad]

So I knew nothing going into this except that as with D’Artagnan’s Unsatisfactory Parenting Skills (1994), the made-for TV mini-series La Femme Musketeer (2004) promised to be a sequel to the Three Musketeers with a female protagonist, creaky old Musketeers who are too old for this shit, and Cardinal Mazarin as the new villain.

With Michael York as the elder D’Artagnan, I was cautiously optimistic…

In the first ten minutes, we learn that this D’Artagnan is happily co-parenting his talented swordsdaughter Valentine (Susie Amy) with his wife Cecile, he earns extra Dad points by allowing said daughter to cosplay as a highwayman attack him in random public duels.

The choreography is top notch and like almost everyone else filming historical European drama, they are using Croatia as a location. The music is somewhat loud and jangly, but mostly doesn’t get in the way of the story. The editing and pacing is quite jarring, but look, swords, never mind.

Hello Gerard Depardieu as Mazarin! He establishes himself as a villain early on with a charming “God helps those who help themselves” mantra. He is keeping his pretty, emo young king in ignorance of the actual results of recent battles, which isn’t especially hard given that young King Louis has about as much depth as a lace handkerchief.

We also get Villeroi (Marcus Jean Pirae), a supporting villain with an alarmingly perky goatee to take Rochefort’s place as our official ‘bad guy who does all the dirty work’. He’s possibly captain of the Cardinal’s Guard too. It was hard to tell through all the snarl.

Despite having two caring parents alive and well (no dead mother, hooray), Valentine is far from a conventional lady of the era, and bemuses prospective husbands by throwing knives at the dinner table.

But never mind all that, Villeroi is trying to blow up the legendary Planchet’s Tavern to piss off the Musketeers, and is caught in the act by three young smart-mouthed, newly-minted Musketeers: Gaston (Casper Zafer), Etienne (Nico Nicotera) and Antoine (Andrew Musselman). Gaston challenges Villeroi to a duel while his friends chuckle and exchange bets…

Until they realise who it is their pal has gone up against, a swordsman far above his pay grade, and promptly kidnap him mid-duel via a hay carriage.

Who can these cheeky young lads possibly be?

Valentine D’Artagnan, meanwhile, sneaks out of the house to head for Paris to find her fortune… and her Dad catches her. Ruh-roh!

But no! He’s not actually trying to stop her being the protagonist of her own story. Instead, D’Artagnan gives her the same advice that his Dad gave him back when he was the hero (awwwww), a letter of introduction to the current Captain of the Musketeers (awwwww), and his ACTUAL SWORD FOR HER TO USE IN HER NEW LIFE.

This D’Artagnan is the best Dad. Michael York, you are adorable.

I’m still recovering from the joy of this scene when it turns out that the Duke of Buckingham is played by Young Sherlock Holmes. And he’s about as committed to matrimonial fidelity as the old one. His glamorous would-be mistress turns out to be that other essential element of a Musketeer sequel screenplay: a glam-frocked villainess from the Milady School of Poisoned Hatpins. Bad news for the Duke.

Elsewhere in the city, Gaston and his mates are in trouble again, but God is on Etienne’s side in bar brawls and card cheating. He and Antoine create a street riot, pause to collect Gaston from a bedroom farce (because why should he have all the fun) and tear their way across the city.

Hmm, something very familiar about these fellows, can’t quite put my finger on it…

an all new generation of Musketeer boys…

On the road to Paris, Valentine “rescues” a glamorous woman under attack who introduces herself as Lady Bolton (Nastassja Kinski) and they become BFFs. Yes, she’s the hatpin murderer. But they can still be friends, right?

Etienne, Gaston and Antoine are raked over the coals by Commander not-Treville who disapproves of them causing a massive street riot on their first day as Musketeers. In the street, Gaston immediately collides with a travel-worn Valentine, gets angry at what he thinks is some rude country boy, and issues a challenge to a duel.

MEEEEEEET CUTE!

Sadly, Commander not-Treville is a roaring sexist and refuses to give Valentine a chance to prove herself in the Musketeers. Because she’s a girl. So that’s where the patriarchy’s been hiding.

As Lady Bolton and Mazarin exchange their news, the main plot becomes clear: she has secured for him a letter that implies strongly that Anne of Austria returned the Duke of Buckingham’s famously unrequited feelings, which puts the King’s parentage in question. Oh, and Mazarin’s niece Marie Mancini (Clemency Burton-Hill) is angling to marry the King (she has seduced him with banter and violin skills), despite his own plan to stop the war in Spain by marrying a convenient Infanta.

Never mind the plot, I want Musketeer hijinks. Valentine stays overnight at Planchet’s Tavern, therefore hacking Paris far more effectively than her Dad did on his first day, and heads out to her duel the next morning.

Gaston is horrified to discover he challenged a woman, and refuses to fight her while his friends mock him thoroughly. When he sees her sword, though, he gets angry… because there’s only four swords like that in France, and his father has one (Etienne and Antoine’s fathers do too…)

They recognise each other, finally, because of course these are the sons of Athos, Porthos and Aramis – and Valentine used to follow them around when she was a little girl.

HOORAY, it’s the Four Musketeers all over again. And there’s a horde of Red Guard to trounce, to celebrate their reunion and force them to work together.

Okay, the whole thing is ridiculous, but it’s also gorgeous and I love it and shut up.

Back on the farm, D’Artagnan L’Originale is enjoying a dirty weekend with his wife now that they’ve finally got the teenager out of the house. He surfaces long enough to feed the pigs (named Athos, Porthos and Aramis, adorably) only to be set upon by thugs. His wife comes to the rescue with her heavy skillet, only to discover that the fellows are in fact… well, guess who?

MUSKETEER MEET-CUTE, SENIOR EDITION!

Turns out that D’Artagnan’s three best friends have been travelling around France putting on theatrical sword shows for coin (um, what?). Aramis never got around to joining the priesthood because he’d have to give up women, Porthos is John Rhys-Davies (Gimli!), and Athos smiles far too much to be credible but I’ll take it because his son has cute spiky hair.

Athos, Porthos and Aramis want D’Art to come with them to Paris to hang out with the younger generations tand… well, his wife has been basically nagging him to go and check on Valentine anyway, so this earns him some brownie points.

ORIGINAL FOUR MUSKETEERS RIDE AGAIN!

I can concede this this is simply not as well made or as elegant a script as almost any other piece of Musketeer media, but I’m not complaining because it’s flat out wish fulfilment, and so much fun to watch. A Musketeer sequel that doesn’t hurt my heart? Yes please!

Highlights of the rest of the mini-series:



1. While Athos’ son Gaston is anti girl cooties to start out with, mostly because she bruised his ego – the other two boys instantly support Valentine and make fun of him for being a prick. The four of them have a relaxed, siblingy rapport despite the script’s attempt to ship Valentine/Gaston.

2. Planchet’s angry wife might be the embodiment of all nagging lady innkeeper cliches ever, but I appreciate the depth and range with which she is capable of bellowing his name. D’Artagnan and Planchet both have loving wives who are competent and scary.

3. The stories of the Three Musketeers performing theatricals isn’t reserved for dinner anecdotes – we get to see it in action! D’Art holds out the money hat. I’m not even kidding.

4. Maria Theresa the Infanta of Spain (Kristina Krepela) is introduced very late in the story, but she is a lively, likeable character and I really enjoyed her scenes with her ladies in waiting. Travelling undercover as ordinary ladies, they face such challenges as grubby inns with bed bugs! With a can-do attitude and the power of friendship!

5. John Rhys-Davis is about as wonderful as a cranky ageing Porthos as you might expect. I wish we could send him back in time to be in the Richard Lester films too. At one point they throw him out a window with a four-poster bed just because.

6. Despite his early attempts to assert his male authority over Valentine, Gaston keeps falling into the role of sidekick, thanks to her amazing superpower of guessing the next twist in the script. By the end of the movie, he’s taking her orders and hasn’t even noticed.

7. Antoine and Etienne, on the other hand, are well aware that they are the B Team (aka comic relief) and enjoy themselves thoroughly: gambling, flirting and blagging their way across the Parisian countryside, swords at the ready. The scene in which they are about to be hanged as thieves and their four Dads (the C team) turn up to rescue them is a thing of beauty and joy, and exactly as humiliating as they deserve.

8. Meanwhile, Valentine gets locked with the princess and her ladies, spends four hours failing to pick a lock with a hair pin, and has far more romantic tension with Maria Theresa than she ever did with Gaston.

9. Etienne’s bargaining prayers to a God who agrees with him that his friends are assholes are masterpieces of snark and passive aggression.

the boys are back in town

10. While the menfolk all engage in a full on epic 28-way duel against Villeroi and the Cardinal’s Guard in the final act, the princess, Valentine and the ladies totally rescue themselves. TWICE.

This, D’Artagnan’s Daughter, this is what you did not give me: D’Artagnan rushing to rescue his daughter at the hands of the villain, only for her to stab the bastard in the chest with a broken sword before he can get there.

Lowlights:

1. Another complete lack of Anne of Austria as kick-ass Regent and Queen Mother. Seriously. This is why we can’t have nice things. I’m also unhappy that the plot hinges on the assumption that Anne got herself knocked up by Buckingham, though it’s kind of amusing that the perceived affair from the original novel is coming back to bite a whole new generation of royalists. Still. Someone’s going to make me a mature Queen Mother Anne of Austria movie someday, right?

2. The young actor playing King Louis is mostly acting with his hair, and can’t cope when asked to do anything more strenuous than lounge on the furniture. It’s a shame given that Gerard Depardieu has so many scenes with him, and spends most of the story looking bemused at the other man’s acting choices. Maria Theresa deserves better, no matter what she thinks.

“My hair is a plot point!”

3. Lady Bolton is a disappointingly cut-price Milady. She is defeated by and gets locked in a cupboard by the only slightly feisty Marie Mancini, and has to chase her down and assassinate her in full view of Valentine. Sloppy work, Bolton.

4. Valentine’s hair and makeup is very 90’s Hope from Days of Our Lives, which is an odd stylistic choice for a series filmed in 2004, and set in the 1600’s.

5. There is a scene in which their new pro-feminist Commander, who has exchanged maybe four sentences with Valentine, sacrifices himself to save her from a bullet (muskets!) and everything slooooooows down as the Junior Varsity Musketeers all react in shock. It’s… a bit “Noooooooo….” (We only find out that she and Paul were close childhood friends after his death, which is a terribly awkward piece of characterisation)

6. “Did you go to sleep with your sword on?” Valentine is alarmed to find Gaston spooning her a little too closely one morning by the campfire YES THEY WENT THERE.

7. Villeroi’s beard is distressing. No photo can convey how much it sticks out like a cube someone built in Minecraft.

8. Valentine gets everything she’s ever wanted in the final scene in the Palace, and it’s immensely satisfying but she has to do it while wearing a massive chandelier of a dress.

So here’s the thing. This mini-series? It’s not… good. I mean, it’s not. The editing and pacing is uniformly terrible, and they managed somehow to make the gorgeous scenery of Croatia look like a slightly old-fashioned back lot somewhere.

Compare this story of D’Artagnan’s daughter with, well, D’Artagnan’s Daughter, and the production values can’t compare at all.

But. Well.

Apparently if you put in a bunch of really genuinely good fight choreography and allow your female hero to actually be a hero (while at the same time allowing the other women around her to also be awesome in their own ways, and the men around her to recognise her competence… and if you throw in a whole lot of sentimental glee about getting the band back together and how great the original Musketeers story actually was…

I’m going to like this version a whole lot more.

So yes, this is a this cheesy fanfic take on the Next Gen Musketeers With A Girl In It concept (OMG I wish this had a fandom, I would read La Femme Musketeer fanfic so hard), and it’s pretty great. The script doesn’t take itself too seriously (apart from the occasional glaringly ineffective Scene Of Earnestness which I put down mostly to directorial pompousness), and it is full of women who get to have an active part in the story – not just the violent ones like Bolton and Valentine, but canny young women like Maria and Marie Mancini (the king’s mistress who risks her life out of loyalty to him even though he’s ditching her), and loyal, funny matrons like Mme D’Artagnan and Mme Planchet. The boys, young and old, get good bits too, but not at the expense of the women.

Most importantly, La Femme Musketeer subscribes to the general philosophy that life is better when Musketeers are BFFs, whichever generation we’re talking about.

No Musketeers died in the making of this motion picture.

This Musketeer Media Monday post was brought to you by the paid sponsors of Musketeer Space, all 80+ of them. You guys rule! Previous posts in this series include:

Musketeers in an Exciting Adventure With Airships (2011)

Musketeers Are All For Love (1993)

Looks Good in Leather: BBC Musketeer Edition Part I (2014)

You Can Leave Your Hat On: BBC Musketeer Edition Part II (2014)

It’s Raining Musketeers: BBC Musketeer Edition Part III (2014)

Mickey Mouse the Musketeer (2004)

Musketeers Crack Me Up Seventies Style (1973)

Musketeer in Pink (2009)

Musketeers Break My Heart Seventies Style (1974)

Musketeers in Technicolor (1948)

Musketeer on Mars (2008, 2012)

Bat’Magnan and the Mean Musketeers (2001)

Russian Musketeers Own My Soul (1979)

All the Musketeer Ladies (2015)

K-Drama Musketeers Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (2014)

Dogtanian’s War on Moustaches (1981)

Listening To Random Musketeers (2002)

Musketeers Brooding in Shirts (2015)

D’Artagnan’s Unsatisfactory Parenting Skills (1994)

Robotech Rewatch Part 59: Cactus in my Pants

Rand in a Viking helmet. You’re welcome.

Keep your scanner tuned to this station. Robotech is back!

Episode 73: Sandstorm



Funnily enough, the Invid are pretty pissed off about that whole destroyed fortress business. The Regent has decided that it’s time to retrieve ‘the simulagent’ AKA Marlene before the humans discover their plans.

Our sweeties, meanwhile, are trapped in a cave after a three day sandstorm, and about five minutes away from killing each other. Annie is thirsty, Lunk feels guilty that it was his job to bring water and he didn’t bring nearly enough for them all (he was under fire at the time and his jeep is not great for keeping off the bullets), and Scott is furious at Lunk for screwing up his orders and basically angry at the universe that he has to deal with these amateurs instead of real soldiers. Rand yells at Scott for having unreasonable expectations of them all, and for constantly going on about Admiral Hunter all the time. Even Lancer objects to being ‘turned on and off like a music box’ when Rook suggests that he sings to take their mind off it.

Oh, and Marlene has a fever.

Rand gives her a sip of water from a piece of cactus he has been carrying around with him, which makes her feel much better, but the rest of the team blow up at him for hoarding secret cactus in his pants. Sick of being yelled at, he goes out into the storm to collect more cactus, and promptly falls in a ravine. Marlene has a vision of the danger he is in, and calls out to him – this is the first time we’ve seen her connect telepathically to someone other than the invade.

The ravine Rand has fallen into is full of spores of the Flower of Life, remember them? He promptly slides into a psychedelic dream in which he battles a dragon to rescue a screaming Marlene. Turns out his subconscious used to play a lot of D&D.

“I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m coming, Marlene!”

Rand rescues her, and carries Marlene along on the back of his bike. She suggests that he might be dreaming which he considers as a possibility without being unduly bothered. Is this really Marlene with him, or a Marlene-figment?

Rand gets to see a “glowing pile of gelatine” which must be what the Invid look like under their suits, and comes very close to guessing why Marlene is always so strongly affected by the proximity of the Invid. Luckily, she distracts him with her nudity. Phew!

The dream has turned into a clip show now, with shots of Rand and Marlene on the bike pursued by the dragon, intercut with shots from the Genesis Pit and other episodes. (it occurs to me, kind of belatedly, that the Genesis Pit might be more important to the story than I previously assumed given that there’s a ‘Genesis’ in the title of the original Japanese version of this series)

Marlene’s message to him is that he mustn’t fight with Scott. Rand tries to explain his problems with the big ole soldier, intercut with more clips from previous episodes.

In which Rand’s subconscious is suddenly the most interesting character in the show…

As the dream continues, Rand is faced with, well. Gandalf. I’m sorry, but it’s basically a big white wizard. He provides Rand with five warriors, stout and true, AKA his mates.

They all arrive looking like, well, “extras in a bad Viking movie,” according to Rand. D&D miniatures, basically.

Even Annie rides a Cyclone in this and manages to make it fly, as does Lunk with his jeep. Rand is starting to get irritated at the lack of logic in this dream. Scott looks hilarious in a helmet with horns.

Marlene is still the damsel in this scenario which, okay.

At one point Rand accuses Scott, Rook and Lancer of being the Three Musketeers, which made my family break out in laughter for fairly obvious reasons.

Fantasy Viking Marlene makes a short heroic speech, as does the wizard, and Rand starts putting together some serious thoughts about the Invid in his head. He even gets to overhear some of the Regent’s thoughts which have previously only been shown in the narrator’s introductions.

After the sandstorm (because none of them are dumb enough to leave the cave during, it’s good to know), Rook finds Rand in the pit and drags him home. He is raving about Invid stuff, speaking the words of the Regent.

And once he’s back to himself, he knows exactly why the Invid have come here. They crossed the cosmos to reach this planet and are trying to save themselves by plugging themselves into the Earth’s evolutionary process. It’s exciting though to be fair this is exactly the same insight that Rand already had during the dinosaur episode, it’s just that no one listened to him.

Scott, far from being grateful at Rand’s information, is angry at the idea Rand might (by figuring out what they’re up to) be sympathising with the Invid. He’s such a blockhead.

In the cave, Rand wakes Marlene up and gazes adoringly into her eyes, remembering the trip they went on even if she wasn’t technically along for the ride (or was she?). The show definitely seems to be setting up romantic tension between these two that I don’t think comes to anything later?

The important thing, however, is that psychedelic dream or no psychedelic dream, Rand is totally the brains of this outfit. God help them all.

This weekly rewatch of classic animated space opera Robotech is brought to you as bonus content for the Musketeer Space project.

Thanks to everyone who has linked, commented, or sponsored me.

You can support Musketeer Space at Patreon.

Musketeer Space Chapter 61 – Tell Me About It, Stud

Check out my most recent Musketeer Media Monday essay – D’Artagnan’s Unsatisfactory Parenting Skills (1994) [AKA D'Artagnan's Daughter].

This is the last proper chapter though there will be an epilogue wrap-up mini chapter next week. Thank you so much for coming along on my madcap journey. Love you all.

If you want to receive the complete ebook of the (lightly edited) web serial to read on your e-reader device, please sign up as a Patreon supporter at the $1 level before the end of this month. I won’t be making the ebook available for general sale any time soon. If you sign up at the $2 level, you will also receive a collection of Musketeer essays from this blog and elsewhere.

Start reading Musketeer Space from Part 1

Missed the last installment? Track back to Part 60

Read a festive Musketeer Space prequel,

“Seven Days of Joyeux.”

Main Page & Table of Contents

PREVIOUSLY ON MUSKETEER SPACE:

Meung Station, betrayal, data studs, Paris Satellite, photo-silks, duels, new friendships, flirting, disappointment, Lunar Palais, mecha-suits, the Regent, the Prince Consort, Madame Su’s pretty husband, a teenage engie with pigtails, fleur-de-lis and cinquefoil, Dana’s mission to Valour, spaceship crash, diamonds, Milord, success, snogging, kidnaps, the return of the Musketeers, tragic backstory, bad news from home, space ponies, self-destructive sexytimes, horrible revelations, spaceships, the Musketeers at war, Truth Space, Cardinal Richelieu, cake, assassination, the prisoner in the tower, star nuns, murder, the iris library, duel, spaceships, alien methods for dealing with criminals, and eternal friendship.

NOW READ ON:

Chapter 61 – Tell Me About It, Stud

The Sun-kissed were gone.

It would take weeks – months, perhaps – to dismantle the war. It would be days before the priests and Sabres and Musketeers and Regent and Cardinal and Amiral all accepted the evidence that the Sun-kissed were indeed gone.

Not leaving, not in the process of withdrawing from the battle zone in their many ships, but gone as if they had never been there at all. As if the humans of the Royal Solar System had been shooting at themselves, all this while.

It had happened, they worked out, within five minutes of the execution of Milord at the hands of his own people.

The population of the ocean world of Truth had survived the siege well enough – with surprisingly few casualties. All members of the Fleet with Truth listed as their birthplace had been given leave to visit the planet and their loved ones.

Porthos, who had left Truth long ago, felt no need to take up that particular offer. Her family were right here, and they needed her.

There were briefings and meetings and reports to be given, but Amiral Treville took it on herself to meet personally with each of her “gals”. The Cardinal and Regent had better things to do than attend such meetings.

Porthos did not relax. Surely all of them were in the Cardinal’s line of sight now. Athos and D’Artagnan, as the two members of the Royal Fleet who had been awake during the execution (and Porthos could kick them both for admitting that honestly) were likely to be blamed for the failure to follow through on the mission as it had been presented.

Sure, the Sun-kissed were gone, but the Cardinal and/or the Regent were supposed to have been the ones who made the grand gesture and ended the war. Not two Musketeers of slightly dubious reputation.

No summons came to explain their side of the story to the Crown or the Church.

On the bright side, this meant that Porthos and her friends could continue to indulge in plenty of grieving, drunkenness and in the special case of Athos and D’Artagnan, refusing-to-properly-process-emotions.

A heavy sense of ‘unfinishedness’ hung over them all. There were only so many quiet evenings of wine and subdued conversation that they could survive before one of them (probably, face it, Athos) cracked and started causing havoc.

Porthos missed Paris so much that it was a permanent ache in her heart. She wanted her own bed, and her kitchen, and her boyfriends, and the freedom to spend the occasional half day completely apart from her dearest friends without worrying they were about to explode from emotional repression.

Finally, their orders came in to report back to regular duty on Lunar Palais. With a few rec hours to fill before their mandatory pre-flight sleeping shift, Porthos invited Athos, Aramis and Dana to join her on the Hoyden. Bonnie provided soup, bread, cake and wine, and left them to it.

Once they had eaten sufficiently, the four of them piled on to Porthos’ bunk with the last of the wine, and she made sure that Athos and Dana, the two most in need of actual comfort though neither would admit it, were properly squished in the middle.

“Let’s talk about something else,” said Dana, her eyes half closed. “Something a million miles from the war and the rest of it.”

So Porthos told her favourite amusing story about the early days, when she and Aramis were learning to be Musketeers together, and the scrapes they got into. After a while, Athos joined in with descriptions of the most outrageous bar fights they had taken part in across Paris. When he ran out of breath, it was Aramis’ turn to entertain.

Finally, Dana was asleep, curled up in a small, tight ball over Porthos’ feet. Aramis was nearly there herself, her long hair spilling over Athos’ shoulder. “She’ll be all right,” she murmured. “She’s getting through it. She’ll mend.”

Porthos kept her steady gaze on Athos, wondering if the same was true for him.

Athos silently toasted her with one of the wine flasks. “Did you know he had a child?” he said, quite the last thing she had expected to come out of his mouth.

Porthos blinked at him. “Milord – really? Is that even possible with alien biology?”

Athos shrugged. “Perhaps she isn’t really his. I suppose that’s a possibility. I looked her up. Morgan De Winter, daughter of Delia and Vaniel. She’s three years old, and heir to the Countess of Clarick.”

Porthos swallowed, not sure what the right thing to say in this instance was. “So Bee – the Countess will look after her?”

“She doesn’t seem the maternal type,” he said. “Very few New Aristocrats are. That’s why we hire nannies.”

“There’s a special insight into your childhood.”

He gave her an ironic smile. “Aramis says I don’t share enough.”

“S’true,” muttered sleepy Aramis.

Porthos thought about it for a minute, then nudged Athos with the foot that wasn’t currently being used as Dana’s pillow. “Does that mean that in twenty years we’re going to have some halfblood alien Countess coming after us for revenge?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me. Let’s hope someone teaches her to fence properly, or we’ll have to do it.” Athos blew out a breath, staring at the ceiling. “I know she was probably a pawn in the game. Another way for him to bind himself to the De Winter family.”

He wasn’t calling his former husband Milord any more, Porthos noticed. He never used a name at all. “Were you – if you’d stayed married, if you’d never found out who he was. Would you have had children together?” In his other life, Athos had a New Aristocrat title and an estate to pass down, after all. Just like Bee De Winter.

Athos gave her a thin smile. “We’d talked about it. Just talk, I realise now. We’d have had to use capsules of course, and if he had donated DNA, surely it would have revealed he wasn’t human. So no, we would not have had children. But at the time having a family seemed like a genuine possibility.” He made a face. “I would have been terrible at it.”

“Hmm,” said Porthos, who wasn’t so sure after watching him take Dana under his wing over the last several months. She had never thought of Athos as paternal, before that, but he had fallen into the reluctant role of mentor, at least, and it suited him.

Aramis used one hand to shove her long hair back out of her face. “You should talk to Chevreuse,” she muttered into Athos’ chest.

Athos patted her vaguely. “Go back to sleep.”

Aramis got that pouty look on her face, something Porthos had never seen her do sober, and poked him hard in the ribs. “No, I mean it. You need to talk.”

Porthos groaned. “This isn’t drunken confession time, is it? I can’t cope with drunken confession time. No one cares that you slept with Chev, Athos. We’re over it.”

Athos gave her a betrayed look. “You knew about the drunken confessions too?”

“I was there for at least half of them. After the fourth time I told Aramis we should write you a note you could read in the morning when you sobered up, but she was still finding it funny.”

He glared at her. “I hate you both.”

Aramis hauled herself up, trying to look serious. “In my defence,” she declared. “It was extremely funny.” She tried to poke Athos in the ribs again but he turned her hand aside, slinging an arm around her shoulders instead. Aramis sighed. “I don’t like you being the least drunk one in the room. Puts the balance of the solar system out.”

“I’m catching up,” he told her, tapping her on the nose with his wine flask.

“Not fast enough.” Aramis rummaged around in the bed, looking for something. “Where’s the clamshell that was here a minute ago? We need to call Chevreuse.”

“About what?” Athos asked in alarm. “Please tell me you’re not matchmaking me with your ex-girlfriend because we spent one drunken night together nearly a year ago. I cannot emphasise enough how much I don’t want you to matchmake me.”

Porthos shifted around in the bed and discovered something hard under her elbow. “Found the clamshell,” she sang.

“Call her,” said Aramis, and this poke turned into more of a punch in Athos’ stomach.

“Ugh. Stop it. Why?”

“Because,” said Aramis, speaking very carefully and slowly so as not to slur her words. “Chevreuse and Montbazon had a baby after she left Paris.”

Athos winced. “What’s that got to do with – good for them. All the more reason to leave them alone.” He was retreating into his usual polite disinterest, one of the many layers of armour he relied upon.

But oh, Porthos saw where this was going, and it was amazing. She clicked the clamshell open in anticipation. Three seconds after Aramis said the words “I found out very recently that Montbazon isn’t the biological father. And you know, Chev didn’t do blokes very often. All I’m saying is, you two should definitely have a conversation some time soon…” Porthos snapped a picture of the startled expression that crossed Athos’ face.

“Porthos,” he said a moment later, very calmly. “I am going to make you eat that clamshell if you don’t delete that image right now.”

“Nuh-uh,” said Porthos, shoving the unconscious Dana off her foot so she could leap to her feet. “This one’s going in the permanent album. And possibly printed on to a mug.”

She made it as far as the cockpit before Athos brought her to the ground, wrestling the clamshell out of her hands, and she was laughing so hard she didn’t even mind.

Also, she had already uploaded the image safely to the Fleetnet servers, so.

“Hey,” said Aramis, leaning into the doorway as she watched them tussle. “Got any Sobriety patches?”

“Why?” Porthos howled. Athos held the clamshell triumphantly over his head, and she tickled him just to see him crumple in on himself.

“Because the Cardinal has summoned Dana to a meeting.”

Porthos and Athos both went very still, agreeing to a silent truce.

“Just Dana?” Athos asked.

“Just Dana,” Aramis said grimly.

“Well, fuck,” said Porthos.

The Sobriety patches had done their work in making Dana respectable for this unexpected appointment, but respectable wasn’t the same as prepared.

She was exhausted, tired deep into her bones, and no amount of Sobriety could fix that. Being sad was exhausting. Dana’s initial shock over Conrad’s death had worn off, leaving a heaviness to her bones. Guilt and dread were there amongst the sadness, and it made for a deeply uncomfortable cocktail of feelings. The death of Milord at the hands of his own people had left her with no emotional reaction at all.

That probably wasn’t a good sign.

Honestly, Dana couldn’t care less what the Cardinal had to say.

She cared a little more that it was Ro who had turned up, smart in the dress reds of a Sabre, to escort her to this meeting.

“Am I under arrest?” Dana thought to say.

Ro lifted a single shoulder in a gesture that was utterly unhelpful. “Honestly, buttercup, I’ve no idea. I go where I’m told.”

“Yes,” Dana said sourly. “That is a thing I know about you.”

There was no sign of Athos, which was hopeful. Aramis and Porthos had promised to sit on him to prevent him crashing the meeting out of guilt or self-sacrifice or what the hell ever.

Dana fidgeted with the studs on her arm as she stood waiting outside the Cardinal’s office for forty-five minutes after the time indicated for the appointment. Someone was being taught a lesson about their place in the solar system, and she suspected it was her. Ro stood with her, barely moving or speaking.

“You’re still pissed off, aren’t you?” Dana blurted finally. “That the Sun-kissed knocked you unconscious, and you missed it all.”

Ro gave her a filthy look. “Maybe I’m pissed off because if I had seen and heard what happened, you would have a credible witness to defend you. As it is – I don’t know if you’re going to get out of this one. The Cardinal is furious that the Sun-kissed made her look – well, irrelevant.”

Dana lifted her chin, refusing to look cowed even though Ro’s words made her feel cold all over. “Like you would have helped me anyway.”

Ro rolled her eyes at her. “Yep, keep thinking of me as the villain of the piece, buttercup. It’s such a constructive attitude.” Her comm chirruped. “Oh look. The Cardinal will see you now.”

“Marvellous,” Dana growled. “Fun times for all.”

The Cardinal’s office on Chaillot Station was filled with pot plants of various varieties: flowering succulents, for the most part, which made the air taste spicy on the tongue.

“Ah, D’Artagnan,” said her Eminence, setting aside a clamshell to pay unnerving attention to the young Musketeer. “So good of you to make time for me.”

“I have been expecting you to take an interest in what happened on The Stars Divine,” Dana said bluntly. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ro huff impatiently at her lack of tact.

“Indeed,” said her Eminence, steepling her elegant hands. “I have read the reports presented to Amiral Treville. You can understand how concerned I am that two pilots under my colleague’s command were directly responsible for losing a vital political prisoner during a time of war…”

“What war?” Dana said sharply. “The war is over. The Sun-kissed are gone. You’re welcome.”

This time, she actually saw Ro slap herself on the forehead. Fine, Dana wasn’t doing herself any favours, but she was sick of this – of pretending that the Cardinal herself hadn’t been directly responsible for half of Milord’s destructive hijinks.

“Captain-lieutenant Athos has a very troubling record,” her Eminence went on. “So many marks against his name for brawling, for behaviour ill-befitting an officer of the Royal Fleet. And of course, there is his known association with the missing prisoner, which makes his culpability in this matter so… disturbing.”

“I see,” said Dana, leaning back in her chair. “That’s smart. You know how much I love my friends, that I would do anything to protect them. But you also know that Athos is Amiral Treville’s darling – she would fight tooth and nail if you attempted to get rid of him. You can’t actually do anything to him, but you think if you threaten him hard enough, I’ll quietly go away. That I’ll make the grand sacrifice to keep him from being prosecuted.”

“Come,” said her Eminence. “No one is speaking of prosecution.”

“Oh, so you don’t want to arrest me for letting Milord go into the hands of his own people – the very people you yourself had promised to deliver him to? What, then? Are you taking my commission? I thought only Amiral Treville could fire a Musketeer.” Dana worked very hard not to tremble on that one, because of all the things Cardinal Richelieu could do to her, taking away the Musketeers was as bad a threat as taking away Athos.

“And yet a resignation letter has to come directly from the Musketeer herself,” the Cardinal said.

Dana actually laughed. “I’m going to resign, am I? I must have missed some of the implied threats, because you’ve said nothing to me today to scare me into that kind of desperate response.”

Cardinal Richelieu smiled a thin, triumphant smile. “Two Musketeers who share a troubling sexual history with the escaped prisoner, the only witnesses to that prisoner’s escape – that embarrassment, combined with the undoubted success of the Combined Royal Fleet in driving the Sun-kissed invaders back where they came from, suggests to me and many of my supporters that there is no need for the Musketeers to exist as a separate fleet at all. We all serve the Crown, after all.”

Dana leaned back in her chair, considering her next words very carefully. “What would Amiral Treville’s role be in this brave new world of a single fleet that you propose?”

“Ah, my dear Jeanne. I’m sure she would enjoy more time to spend with her grandchildren.”

Dana stared at the Cardinal. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ro sucking in a long, slow breath.

“I am surprised,” Dana said finally. “That you think it appropriate to blame the Musketeers for the Sun-kissed taking custody of their prisoner. Considering that we were working under your direct orders at the time.”

The Cardinal’s face went very still. It was fascinating. Not even a muscle twitched. “The mission parameters were very specific,” she said finally.

“Oh yes,” said Dana. “The verbal mission parameters that you gave to us via Special Agent Cho – or is it Captain Cho? I lose track. They were very specific. That’s why it was so thoughtful of you to allow us more flexibility in our interpretation of those orders, in a written contract.”

This time, it was only the Cardinal’s eyebrows that moved, but boy did they move. “Say that again,” she said coldly.

Dana smiled, and swiped one of the studs along her wrist – the one that Athos had pressed upon her the minute he realised she had been summoned to this meeting without him. It was an expensive piece, a flat bead of platinum with a red fleur-de-lis stamped into it.

At the swipe of Dana’s fingertip, the words of the contract contained within sprang up, glowing in the air between them.

It is by my orders and for the good of Crown and Solar System that the bearer of this stud has done what they have done.

Cardinal Richelieu, timestamp 987398Red, identity sealed.

The Cardinal stared at the words, and then up at Dana. “Do you want a promotion, Captain-lieutenant D’Artagnan?”

Dana blinked rapidly, taking in the change of tone. “No thank you, your Eminence. I’m still quite new. You know how it is. Learning the ropes. No promotions warranted or necessary.”

There was a muffled snort from the direction of Ro. Dana kept her gaze fixed firmly forwards.

“As you were then, D’Artagnan,” Cardinal Richelieu said, opening her clamshell again, and making it clear that the Musketeer was dismissed. “We’ll rattle along as we have been for a while longer.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Dana. She felt Ro tug at her sleeve, and rose to her feet. “See you back in Paris.”

“Oh, I’m sure our paths will cross from time to time,” said the Cardinal sardonically.

Dana was still a little in shock as Ro propelled her out of the office, and the door spiralled shut behind them.

“Just so you know,” said Ro in a steady voice as they walked down the corridor. “That was insanely hot.”

“Thanks,” said Dana automatically, still more concerned with putting one foot in front of the other without falling over. “Wait, what?”

Ro took hold of Dana’s shoulders, crowding her against the nearest wall and kissing her like they were on a burning spaceship about to die.

Dana gasped into the kiss, surprise giving way to hell yes, want, and wound one arm around Ro’s neck, reeling her in.

“Right,” said Ro, sounding somewhat dazed as they broke apart. “It’s not the Sabre uniform, is it? Because I hardly ever wear one of these.”

“It’s definitely not the uniform,” said Dana, grinning at her.

“Okay. Good to know.” Ro raked her fingers through her long hair. Dana had never seen her looking remotely nervous before. It was kind of great. “I’ll be seeing you, buttercup.” She gave Dana a half-mocking salute, and strode away down the corridor.

Dana stayed leaning against the wall a little longer, as she caught her breath. And yes, sure, she did watch very closely as Ro walked away.

Hell. Yes. Want.

Huh.

You have been reading Musketeer Space, by Tansy Rayner Roberts. Tune in next week for another chapter! Please comment, share and link. Musketeer Space is free to read, but if you’d like to support the project for as little as $1 per month, please visit my Patreon page. Pledges can earn rewards such as ebooks, extra content, dedications and the naming of spaceships. Milestones already unlocked include the Musketeer Media Monday posts, the Robotech Rewatch posts, and “Seven Days of Joyeux,” a special Christmas prequel novella which was released in December 2014.

D’Artagnan’s Unsatisfactory Parenting Skills (1994)

As it turns out, there are so many Musketeer related movies that I ran out of Musketeer Media Mondays long before I ran out of DVDs – in particular, I didn’t get to many of the sequels, including the entire Man in the Iron Mask oeuvre and the 80’s sequel to Musketeers Crack Me Up Seventies Style and Musketeers Break My Heart Seventies Style featuring the original cast and creative team.

But before this epic project of mine rolls to a close, I wanted to give a bit of attention to the imaginary daughters of D’Artagnan.

As well as the ageing Musketeers, the book sequels focus on two ‘next generation’ kids, both male: the son of Milady, and the son of Athos. The girl in these stories is Louise de la Valliere, who isn’t related to anyone. Obviously that’s no fun at all, so several media adaptations (including, let us never forget, Barbie and the 3 Musketeers) provide D’Artagnan with a daughter to carry on his legacy.

On the whole I disapprove of Musketeer film sequels, as they seem largely an opportunity to kill off elderly versions of characters I adore, or show how miserable and lonely they’ve been since we saw them last. (Also they rarely provide what I actually want to see from next generation stories, which is Athos Being A Surprisingly Good Dad) Still, I remember loving La fille de D’Artagnan (D’Artagnan’s Daughter/The Revenge of the Musketeers, 1994) as a teenager, and I was hanging out for a bit of female-centred Musketeer action, so…

The opening scenes of La fille de D’Artagnan (1994) offer us a lot of dramatic horse riding, nun-slapping, a shirtless black slave in chains, and a very angry woman in a fabulous scarlet gown. The lady in red has ordered the convent raid in order to capture the shirtless man: an escaped slave who, charmingly, is not given a name despite kicking off the main plot.

Eloise (Sophie Marceau), a feisty young novice, is suitably violent in defence of the slave and later discovers a blood-stained document that he was using for a bandage. She then vows vengeance on the mysterious woman in red after the wounded Mother Superior dies in bed.

We never see the slave again. Apparently he wasn’t all that important, but the piece of paper he bled on really was, even if it looks like a laundry list.

It’s all somewhat earnest and ponderous, but picks up a lot when Eloise dons male clothing to go to Paris and ask her famous father for help with all that vengeance business. Young Sophie Marceau has a wide-eyed charm reminiscent of Audrey Hepburn, which adds a whole bunch of adorable to the general antics. Her first proper fight scene, in a compulsory tavern, is fun because she shows all the bluster and slapstick enthusiasm of the original D’Artagnan, with a lot less of the ego.

The plot largely revolves around a conspiracy (or perception of a conspiracy) based on the blood stained paper (which many think might be a laundry list but Eloise insists is a secret code). The conspiracy involves slavery and the potential death of the young about-to-be crowned king but really it’s a chaotic sort of conspiracy plot and every one knows it – it’s an excuse for a caper, for wordplay and code breaking and amusing misunderstandings involving love poetry.

Eloise picks up a lovestruck poet as her sidekick, which can’t hurt. His name is Quentin la Misere, and their romance is an oddball mix of his adoration and her complete ambivalence. I like the idea that she picks someone so entirely unlike her father and someone who is less traditionally masculine (she wants to be a Musketeer not marry one) but the truth is, she doesn’t pick Quentin so much as let him trail around the countryside after her. The only time we see her instigate any affection between them is a) in front of her Dad to annoy him and b) when Quentin is asleep in an odd scene where she unlaces her bodice in a gratuitous scene to remind everyone that Sophie Marceau has breasts. Apparently she’s attempting a seduction, but it’s so half-hearted that when the young man doesn’t wake up from the sheer presence of her topless chest, she covers up again and teases him later about what he missed out on. The kiss and acceptance of him as her lover by the end of the movie is completely unearned – I would have preferred a friendly handshake at that point.

Misere is an odd character – he’s given all kind of interesting context, such as being a political agitator through his poetry, and his use of wordplay is repeated often through the dialogue (especially by Cardinal Mazarin, his nemesis) but it doesn’t come to much in the plot at all, and he mostly exists so that D’Artagnan can learn to overcome his paternalistic attitude towards his daughter thanks to a completely unthreatening and perfectly nice young man. (I hate this “Daddy learns to let his daughter make her own decisions and comes to terms with the idea she might date” trope so much, I hate it, even in a generally excellent film)

Anyway, the most important part of the story unfolds once Eloise gets to Paris and confronts her father with her existence – we learn here that this is an AU where D’Artagnan and Constance were together long enough to have a child together, which would be quite heartwarming (hooray, she lives!) if Constance wasn’t dead long before the film begins (boo).

“Planchet, it’s our little girl,” he announces to his decrepit servant, who is quite pleased and nostalgic, since apparently (is anyone surprised?) it was Planchet who did the bulk of the parenting work before Eloise was sent away. D’Artagnan himself, not going for any Father of the Year medals, is dismayed to have his adult daughter with him, as he was pretty sure the whole point of handing her over to a nunnery was that he would never have to actually make any paternal decisions.

She doesn’t resist the call to adventure at all; he resists it on her behalf, and she has to fight him at every turn to be allowed to even participate in her own movie.

The interesting question is, where did Eloise pick up her fencing skills? Those nuns obviously have hidden depths.

Not only does D’Artagnan mock and deny his daughter’s mission, but he then humiliates Quentin when the poet bursts in and tries to ask for her hand in marriage.

“Who do you think you are, D’Artagnan?” sputters the poet, only to find out that his ladylove is indeed the daughter of his greatest heroes. Awkward.

Philip Noiret is funny and sad and generally excellent as the aged D’Artagnan who misses his friends and the good old days, even if the script keeps repeatedly demanding that he behave as a complete dick to his daughter for the sake of, eh, character growth. I also find it hard to like a film that kills off Athos before it even starts.

Athos is not expendable, people!

Highlights of the rest of the film include:

D’Artagnan coming home from pouring his heart out to Athos’ grave only to discover someone has beaten up Planchet and taken Eloise from their house – that someone, it turns out, being Eloise herself, because she’s amazing.

The repeated use of ‘Zounds,’ a swear word not used nearly enough.

A father-daughter duel in which the two of them face off against the Red Guard (about three each) and D’Artagnan has a Thrust named after each of his dearest friends.

Aramis the Bishop, discovered in bed (“religious contemplation”) with a young lady, wearing cucumber slices on his face… ah, Aramis, never change.

“You reason like a noodle, my friend.” Aramis taking over the code-breaking task because his brain is better than D’Artagnan’s. Aramis likewise overruling D’Artagnan about letting Eloise join their expedition because, well, she’s useful and she’s seen the villains, so shush now old man.

The villains are Eglantine de Rochefort (presumably the previous Rochefort’s daughter) who has all the style and fabulous outfits of a Milady De Winter (every filmmaker working on any Musketeer sequel ever deals with their distress at Milady having been executed in the original by coming up with an alternative femme fatale to take her place because honestly, what’s the point without Milady?), and her boyfriend Crassac. Their motivations are vague, their villainy two dimensional (though Eglantine occasionally gets an extra dimension when she discusses her anti-nun agenda), but judging from their private scenes together, he at least seems to be very enthusiastic about oral sex, which is more than we usually see from the good guys. Also, Eglantine’s outfits are all colour-coded (red) and astounding.

Aramis agonises for hours over the mysterious code only for Porthos to casually solve it while glancing over his shoulder.

Eglantine de Rochefort’s amazing trouser suit (with skirts over, presumably for riding) which she wears in her confrontation with Eloise. The scene turns into a hideously embarrassing catfight (ladies, have some fucking dignity!) but the outfit is sheer outrageous splendour and it made me happy every time it turned up.

The Musketeers finally discover that Crassac is the bad guy, and he has Eloise captive, but it turns out he owns so many chateaux that it doesn’t narrow things down much. Details like this make me grin. It is a very funny movie most of the time.

A frankly spectacular reveal that the one-eyed spy (a blatant red herring) who is working for Mazarin is actually ATHOS, back from the dead. D’Artagnan and the others discover this while breaking into a deserted chateau while he is attempting to break out through the same window.

JOY IS ALL.

The fight scene on the boat with all four musketeers is marvellous (Aramis fighting sabre and shooting an opponent because, you know, Muskets have guns sometimes), Athos teaching fancy tricks to his opponents while killing them, and most of all, Quentin going over the side of the boat just long enough to arm a nun.

I do like it when battle nuns are included.

Quentin saying “that’s so dated” when Aramis tells him there is a plot to kill the king.

Athos’ shifting eyepatch, which is apparently a legitimate espionage technique, and rapidly becomes a Musketeer in joke.

I’m not sure what to think of Eglantine de Rochefort, who seems to lurch from cliches of ‘fallen woman is villain’ to some genuinely powerful scenes musing on the nature of wickedness. I do like most of the scenes in which she and Eloise have conversations, at least one of which passes the Bechdel Test, a rare thing in Musketeer Media Not Involving Barbie.

Eloise’s intense sympathy for Eglantine almost but not quite makes up for the huge percentage of the story in which she is chained to something, or otherwise imprisoned.

Eloise does, however, talk and fight her way (almost) out of trouble with the power of swords and friendship. This scene, and that in which she fences the asshole who was going to force her to marry him, are both spectacular, even if they both end with her lost, vulnerable and rescued by her Papa.

D’Artagnan does admit to being proud of his daughter at the end, and their hug and riding-into-the-sunset banter is wonderful even if it’s been very hard-earned by some of us who had to grind our teeth through so many of their previous interactions.

Lowlights include:

The wince-inducing discussions of how fashionable Negro slaves are at court (though we never see black characters at court or in any context other than being on or escaping from a slave ship), several references to the Redskins of America, and other “historically authentic” (I guess?) but generally uncomfortable discussions of race (in a movie that, let’s not forget, kicks off its plot with an escaped slave who doesn’t get a name). I guess it’s good that they acknowledged period racial issues at all?

Creepy spoiled boy-king managed by Cardinal Mazarin is worth showing on screen so he (the boy-king) can leer at Eloise, but Mazarin’s desire to marry the Queen Mother (and current Regent until the coronation) Anne of Austria is not apparently a good enough reason to include her as a character in the film. NEVER MAKE A MUSKETEER SEQUEL WITHOUT ANNE OF AUSTRIA, WHAT ARE YOU, NEW HERE?

Horribly awkward scene (one of many, but this is the worst) in which D’Artagnan’s paternalistic annoyance at Eloise ramps up and he slaps her in front of his friends; they then pretend this never happened.

D’Artagnan being a dick to Eloise on at least twelve other occasions.

The stakes of the ‘slave-trading’ plot being raised by a whole bunch of white nuns (and Eloise) captured to be sold as slaves. Because, um, that’s so much more dramatic than black people being enslaved? Oh, and no speaking parts for black actors in a plot that hinges on slavery. No, film. Just, no.

Eloise is largely relegated to damsel for a good portion of the last half of the movie, which gets wrapped up in the Musketeer reunion instead. I mean, it was a great Musketeer reunion, I’m all for that, but I kind of thought she was supposed to be the protagonist here.

Eloise gets super creeped on by Crassac, which is played as if it’s supposed to be amusing how gross he is.

Eloise also has her shirt ripped open to show how terrible slavery is, and also how pretty Sophie Marceau’s breasts are (in case we missed that, the first time).

I do not ever need to hear about D’Artagnan’s haemorrhoids.

Super icky sex scene with the boy king (who looks about twelve), made even more icky when D’Artagnan interrupts and starts berating the couple because he assumes it’s Eloise under the covers (and is judging her for her imaginary sluttiness when she is a captive and therefore unlikely to have consented). Oh, and when it turns out it’s not his daughter after all, the annoyed boy king makes a Negro joke because D’Artagnan is covered in soot. Yes. Really.

The brilliant final duel between Eloise and Crassac ends with him using her innate sympathy against her and faking a heart attack in order to disarm her, leaving it to D’Artagnan to stab him in the back while she cowers against the stairs. BAD FORM, EVERYBODY.

Ahem. This is a good film, really. In places. I can see why it’s so highly regarded. I appreciated all the nods of nostalgia towards the original novel (constantly teasing D’Artagnan about his yellow mare, etc). The sword fights were great, the Musketeers reunited were great, and Sophie Marceau is wonderful in all of her scenes. The uncomfortable racial undercurrents were only weird and intrusive in like, three or four scenes. Maybe five.

But…

Surely the point of twisting canon in order to give us a female-centred Musketeer sequel story is to, well. Give us an empowering story about women with swords. And this wasn’t exactly that. It was almost entirely a story about D’Artagnan’s failings as a father, and Eloise’s longing to be accepted by him, with a massive side plot of Musketeering Is Awesome, Everyone Should Try It. We never really got to know anything about Eloise as a person, or her skills and interests beyond following in her father’s footsteps (or even how she managed to train herself).

Given the title, I shouldn’t complain that Eloise is never framed as a potential Musketeer herself, or that she barely gets to talk to the other Musketeers, or that she doesn’t get a fully realised heroic journey because Papa is always there to play the hero in the last minute. The film was billed as “the daughter of D’Artagnan” and that’s exactly what we got.

Every scene in which Sophie Marceau is fighting as Eloise and being Eloise is joyful – but the joy gets sucked out of the scene every time D’Artagnan opens his big mouth in her direction. Gah. Their father-daughter relationship is so much more interesting when they are fighting than when they are talking, which is in itself a very intriguing film choice… but I wish, oh I wish she had got to rescue him at least once.

I suspect I would have liked this film a lot more before I was so immersed in Musketeer lore. I wanted it to be much more than it is, and instead it left me with the same feeling that so many children’s films do these days, that the story is all about the Dad and his Feelings, while the daughter herself is a plot point rather than a fully realised character.

With all that I had to complain about, I simply adored the final credits sequence, which presented Eloise in exactly the position that the film never let her occupy: as a newly minted Musketeer, introducing herself and her co-stars, theatre-style (or possible, 1970′s sit-com style). It was adorable, sweet and funny and I can completely understand why most people (including me, twenty years ago) left this film smiling broadly.

This Musketeer Media Monday post was brought to you by the paid sponsors of Musketeer Space, all 80+ of them. You guys rule! Previous posts in this series include:

Musketeers in an Exciting Adventure With Airships (2011)

Musketeers Are All For Love (1993)

Looks Good in Leather: BBC Musketeer Edition Part I (2014)

You Can Leave Your Hat On: BBC Musketeer Edition Part II (2014)

It’s Raining Musketeers: BBC Musketeer Edition Part III (2014)

Mickey Mouse the Musketeer (2004)

Musketeers Crack Me Up Seventies Style (1973)

Musketeer in Pink (2009)

Musketeers Break My Heart Seventies Style (1974)

Musketeers in Technicolor (1948)

Musketeer on Mars (2008, 2012)

Bat’Magnan and the Mean Musketeers (2001)

Russian Musketeers Own My Soul (1979)

All the Musketeer Ladies (2015)

K-Drama Musketeers Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (2014)

Dogtanian’s War on Moustaches (1981)

Listening To Random Musketeers (2002)

Musketeers Brooding in Shirts (2015)

Robotech Rewatch 58: True Snowmance

Keep your scanner tuned to this station. Robotech is back!

Episode 71: The Secret Route

The crew are stranded in the mountains looking for a safe way across. Annie goes wandering off in town and crashes into a teddy boy called Eddie who doesn’t seem to object to her blatant sexual harassment.

Yellow Dancer calls on the creepy mayor Donald, looking for employment in his nightclub. Karla, the mayor’s obviously abused fiance, is shocked to recognise her old boyfriend Lancer. Turns out that she was the one who first helped him disguise himself as a woman in his early freedom fighter days.

Yellow Dancer sings “an old Minmei song” (must have been from her more than three songs days because I don’t remember this one) in honour of the “happy couple” while he and Karla recall their tragic backstory, including that one time he abandoned her on a train to save her from his terrible life choices.

As Lancer and Karla have an awkward reunion in the dressing room, Annie interrupts and tells Lancer all about her new boyfriend. Distracted, Lancer totally lets her run off after her “dreamboat” without questioning how old the dude is and whether Annie is likely to get into trouble here.

Eddie actually seems to have the same mental age as Annie despite being three times her height. There’s a whole plot going with a secret map (of the only safe route through the mountains) that the mayor controls, and makes available via bribery. Eddie’s Dad acquires a copy of the map and is totally fine with having Annie as a daughter in law. Weirdos!

Later, the bike crew have dinner together (except Annie who has obviously been abducted) and Rook displays her complete lack of empathy towards the quiet, still-traumatised stranger in their midst. Scott suggests they name the new girl Marlene without mentioning to anyone that it’s the name of his dead girlfriend which is SO CREEPY I can’t even tell you.

Karla actually plays a genuine Minmei song on the piano, which makes me go awww.

When Lancer tries to convince karla to run away with him, she confesses that creepy Donald makes a living from selling fake maps that lead travellers to certain death – there is no safe way through the mountains.

Annie, meanwhile, has smuggled a copy of the map to the bikie crew, before driving off happily with her new family. Lancer ditches Karla to warn the others just in time, but they’ve missed Annie, Eddie and his Dad. Mercy dash!

Marlene actually says something of her own volition, warning danger just as the Invid attack. So… useful? Turns out she is listening to mysterious voices in her head.

Having rescued Eddie, his dad and Annie, they all head back to town to find a brute squad waiting for them, led by Donald. Because of course, he can’t afford to have anyone reveal his secret.

He wasn’t however, expecting to be shot at by three mecha suits piloted by Scott, Rand and Rook.

Donald, freaking out a bit, promises them a genuine escape route if they just leave. Also weapons and supplies. They grudgingly do a deal (even though, um, do they really trust him?)

Lancer goes back to town to fetch the supplies and Karla, who wants to join him in the fight though he’s still being super patronising about that.

To their shock, Donald sends his collection of antique fighters on autopilot to shoot a safe path through the mountains and help Karla escape, making a grand sacrifice. As it snows around them, Karla realises that her creepy fiance really does love her, and returns to him while Lancer leaves with his friends and a power ballad in his heart.

Oh, and Annie’s boyfriend Eddie ditches her politely. Thank goodness.

Episode 72: The Fortress

Continuity! They’re still in the mountains, and that snow we saw start yesterday is everywhere now. Rand is heading out on reconnaissance (possible violent reconaissance with explosives) and Annie wants to come too, but he suggests it would make more sense to have a fellow adult come along – and he describes the person we know he wants (Rook) thus: “Blue eyes and blonde hair and a team spirit that we all admire…”

I love that Rand is sarcastic about Rook’s terrible attitude.

They’re all actually dreadful teammates – their joint reaction to Scott’s depression over the death and destruction of the other survivors from the REF showed us that, because come on, the boy deserved a day or two of gloom – but Rook is especially bad.

She’s written as a cardboard ‘men are terrible’ 80’s straw feminist which is deeply annoying as she responds to everything Rand says with righteous anger, regardless of whether he is genuinely cracking on to her, or asking her to pass the salt.

Rook is basically Jessie from Saved By the Bell, ruining feminism for the rest of us by making it look like it’s 99% killjoyness to 1% having a genuine point.

Rand reluctantly takes Annie with him on skis (where did they get the skis?) and when some Invid arrive, their luggage is interfered with, allowing for a comedy routine about Annie’s bikini having a bomb in it.

Okay, maybe Rook has a point about Rand being constantly on the verge of being sexually inappropriate.

After some surprise mountain-climbing, Rand and Annie find a mysterious Invid fortress, walk right up into it, and wander around all the glowing alien walls, despite the huge number of Invid guards in the vicinity.

At one point, Rand says ‘boy that was dumb’ about Annie tripping over. Sweetie, I think you passed the point of dumb before the ad break.

Annie’s determination to be the one to set the explosives ends in disaster when she drops the bomb and falls over again.

BOOM.

Back in the camp, Marlene screams in pain as the others admire the big poof of black smoke coming out the side of the mountain.

Everyone is really judgy about her sensitivity because they are assholes.

Lunk: Hope your stomach’s stronger than your head, Marlene. (Drives chaotically)

Everyone rides to Rand and Annie’s rescue, flying into the Invid fortress and tracking their friends. It’s quite nice to know they’ve all microchipped each other.

They find Rand and Annie buried in heaps of goopy plasma, and discover that the Invid have all vacated the premises. When Rand shoots at a bunch of what look like alien incubators, Marlene screams again. Huh, is it me or does that happen whenever anyone commits violence against Invid? Might be a clue.

Scott cowboys up and does all the heroics while everyone else flees “back to the ranch” i.e. the next bit of mountain with a lot less snow.

He must be good at it because he manages to completely trash the fortress, which goes up in flames.

Afterwards, Rook and Annie (in makeshift swimsuits) have a splash fight in the water (wow they MUST have travelled far if the water is warm enough to swim in, OMG). They encourage Marlene to join them, and she promptly whips off all her clothes, giving Rand a heart attack.

Lancer grabs Rand’s ear and gives him a polite talking to about when it is and is not polite to stare at a naked lady..

Speaking of naked ladies, I guess it makes a change to flash the female character’s nudity during a swan dive rather than a shower, but did they have to freeze frame? Did they really?

This weekly rewatch of classic animated space opera Robotech is brought to you as bonus content for the Musketeer Space project.

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