Tansy Rayner Roberts's Blog, page 61

ROBOTECH REWATCH 4: Welcome to the First Chinese Restaurant in Space

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

Previous episodes:

1 – So Much For World Peace

2 – Who Put Pluto There?

3 – To Be In Love

Episode 5. Transformation

Living on a spaceship under siege is hard work! Minmei’s aunt and uncle bemoan the tight rations, and that gives Minmei a bright idea: let’s reopen the restaurant! She points out that there was food rationing during the last war, and her family kept the restaurant open then.

“But even though we’re lost in space, life can still go on as usual, can’t it?”

Minmei, Queen of Denial 2009

Minmei dresses up in formal Chinese costume and welcomes their first customers, a gang of pilots who set about sexually harassing her. (“So you and that guy stuck in space on your own, hurr hurr, did you ‘fall in love’ or what?”) Rick, staying in a room above the restaurant overhears Minmei shutting down any romantic speculation about her time in captivity. Not realising she was diffusing an uncomfortable situation, Rick’s feelings are hurt by her insistence that they are just good friends, and he pouts for the rest of the episode. Oh, poor sulky baby.

Not content with a Russian sea captain commanding the SDF1, it turns out they also have German scientists aboard. This particular scientist, Dr Emil Lang, tries to talk Captain Gloval into experimenting with the ship’s own modular transformation in order to get access to their main gun, and Gloval acts like he’s never heard of such a thing before, despite all Robotechnology being based on this premise.

(Further evidence of my theory that he was shipped in from a 19th century Russian novel)

Roy takes Rick for a walk to show off their aircraft carriers, now locked on to the side of the ship, and attempts to seduce him into the military on the grounds that being a fighter pilot is healthier than mooning over Minmei. And might possibly help Rick’s romantic chances, because multitasking.

Rick pouts and sighs about how much Minmei has changed now that she’s not literally trapped with him alone, and he has to share her attention with other people.

Roy confesses that Minmei was actually the one who noticed Rick was depressed and sent Roy to give him a kick up the backside. So maybe she’s not as uninterested in Rick as he imagines? Roy then undoes all this good work with the following:

“Girls like her can be sort of fickle sometimes, know what I mean? You’d better make sure some guy in uniform doesn’t come along.”

Roy Fokker, Chick Expert

Rick and Minmei hang out in her bedroom, and she shows him what she really went back for when she ran away from the shelters that day – not her diary at all, but a letter saying she made the finals of the Miss Macross beauty pageant. Her dream is lost now, of course, with them stuck in space. Rick’s dream is over too, with his beloved plane reduced a pile of junk. Oh, moody teenagers who think your life is over. I have no patience with you now!

Meanwhile, the aliens have finally found the errant Micronians. As the Zentraedi attack the SDF1, Rick continues to be a sulky baby, happy to leave the action to Roy and the others. He is miserable about Minmei’s lack of attention even when she is actively flirting with him, and complimenting his flying skills.



“Thundering Asteroids! Another direct hit.”

Captain Gloval sums up their military position.

Damage, casualties… the aliens are kicking their butts all over space. If only they could fire the main gun. Okay, fine, Gloval is finally convinced.

TRANSFORMATION MODULATION INITIATED!

Back in teen drama land, Minmei convinces Rick he will be happiest if he joins the military using the ancient art of passive aggressiveness. He responds to this interest in his wellbeing by acting jealous of the soldiers she has been “entertaining” at the restaurant. Neither of them are smart enough for this conversation, which seems to confuse them both.

The animation of Robotech has always fascinated me – it’s very simplified and stylised at times with the beautiful battles a great example – most explosions are conveyed as a bright circle, and so on. But it also uses some deliberately filmic techniques, clever touches like Captain Gloval’s hat tumbling off his head in slo-mo during a particularly rough battle. They were reaching for the stars, and often conveyed some real emotional resonance through animation that seems clunky by modern standards.

We also get some clever meta direction, such as when the battle comes directly into the SDF-1, and the Zentraedi pick up the feed via their own spyware drones.

“I’m okay, but what about the hull?”

Lt. Lisa Hayes takes her job more seriously than anyone else on this ship.

So, remember that city that they let the civilians rebuild? They apparently didn’t put a lot of thought into where they put all those buildings. The city cracks apart as the SDF1 initiates its modular transformation. Cars crash, walls buckle, and everything starts ripping apart.

Minmei of course falls into an instant ravine, possibly because she is hoping she will get more screen time and/or sympathy from Rick if she goes the Full Damsel. It’s a working theory.

“So that’s the transformation.”

Roy, making sure everyone has noticed the giant space gun in the room.

The SDF-1 takes on a robotic form with a big gun in its chest, which destroys the aliens. Foooom! Rick and Minmei turn out to be fine (he obviously rescued her during the ad break), and in a great position to survey the ruined city with big sad eyes.

Public service announcements ring out across the rubble, assuring the civilians that the damage was regrettable but necessary, and thanking them for their co-operation.

Proving that he is actually capable of learning from experience (I didn’t have high hopes), Rick finally decides that it probably is the responsible thing to do, to join the military. Minmei swoons at the thought of Rick in a sexy uniform.

PLEASE REMEMBER IN FUTURE THAT THIS DECISION CAME AT HER INSTIGATION.

Maintain communications on this channel! The Robotech Rewatch will return next week! Find out more about the Musketeer Space project and how you can support it here at Patreon. Or just check out Musketeer Space, a space opera web serial with swashbuckle and style, starting from Chapter 1.

Musketeer Space Part 5 – The Mending of Athos

Welcome back to Musketeer Space! My Patreon campaign is up to $160 per month, with 41 supporters, which is very cool for a project that’s only been running a month. I do hope we reach the $200 level, as I have great plans for a Musketeer Christmas story (in a galaxy without Christmas, hmm, no one can say I’m not up for a challenge). I’ve also added a couple of dreamy, swoonworthy new milestones to the page, to show the point at which I’ll be able to fund professional cover art and paid editorial work for the final book.

In other news, I have readers! This is exciting to me. Mieneke in the Netherlands wrote an enthusiastic post about Musketeer Space this week, all about her love for Dana and the story so far. It absolutely made my day.

I also wrote a guest post this week at SF Signal, about my love for serialised stories, with particular reference to Charles Dickens and his many fanzines, and The Three Musketeers of course.

But you’re not here for links, you’re here for Musketeers in Space.

Start reading from Part 1

Missed the last installment? Track back to Part 4.

Archive & Table of Contents

PREVIOUSLY IN MUSKETEER SPACE: Dana D’Artagnan travelled to Paris Satellite with dreams of becoming a Musketeer pilot. Instead she has no ship, no job, and a nemesis who doesn’t seem to even know she’s alive. Oh yes, and she’s got herself challenged to three duels in one day as well, behind something called a Luxembourg…



NOW READ ON.

This chapter is dedicated to Kari, with thanks for your support.

PART FIVE: The Mending of Athos

“The Luxembourg on Level 5,” turned out to be a Church of All. Dana had not expected that. Was it seemly to take brawling drugs and play at duels with brain-altering spaceship games so close to a house of God?

Then again, the Musketeers were up for all manner of other vices and sins, why not add a little sacrilege into the mix?

It was a lavish installation compared to the cathedral booths she had seen down on the main shopping plazas: a pure white structure behind a storage bay, with bright plexi-glass windows which flicked through a rotation of holy images: the solarnauts, star fields and other images from early astro-travel. There were no pointed roofs or gables in space station architecture, but the windows told you this was a place of worship.

The tourist visa stud in her collar sparked into life as Dana approached the church, informing her that if she registered her palm print at the door, the church would present her with her own personalised religious imagery, based on past preferences.

For a moment, feeling lost and far from home, Dana considered it. But she was about to take part in a highly illegal ritual, so now was not the time to be leaving a trail of her presence on Paris Satellite.

Later, there could be absolution, and comfort. For now, she had to keep alert and be ready to run if there was trouble.

Trouble other than three Musketeers waiting to burn her synapses out, obviously.

Dana had assumed the spot behind the Luxembourg that all three Musketeers were so keen to use for Duelling purposes would be a spare storage space, or some other generic empty room with metal walls. Instead, she found that the corridor behind the church opened out into a meadow.

Grass. Trees. Sky. Tiny fucking daisies bursting up out of the alarming greenness of it all.

Possibly this time the brain damage had kicked in before she even shot up a dose of Duel?

But no, as Dana walked across the soft, spongy grass, she spotted the bleeding edges of the scenery. The colour degenerated into random pixels here and there, making an occasional ragged flaw in an otherwise perfect design. This meadow was Artifice all the way, the same technology they used to make churchgoers feel that they were stepping into the sacred building of their choice.

Everything about satellite or station life came down to two things: conservation of space, and the sanity of residents. Artifice helped with both, though as each generation passed, it became less and less necessary to mimic dirt-side conventions with any degree of accuracy.

When humans first came to live among the stars, they had very conventional ideas about what they needed to retain their sense of cultural identity: the romanticisation of grass and sky, for example. The first artificial environments had been too accurate, literal uncanny valleys that made the station residents feel more homesick than ever. The fantastical and creative artificial environments, however, swiftly became popular precisely because they weren’t a pale imitation of “home.’

Dana had never before walked across an Artifice environment that was trying so hard to look genuine. The rec ground that ran across the top of the power plant in the centre of Gascon Station had been hacked by generation after generation of teenagers, so the sky was a multi-coloured jumble of graffiti tags and dirty jokes, and the ground only pretended to be covered in grass for the annual Locals vs. Incomers cricket match. The rest of the time it displayed random artistry, as far as you could get from a plain old fashioned dirt side landscape.

Perhaps Paris was different. This was the Honour and Valour end of the solar system, after all. There might be more residents here who craved white bobbly clouds in a clear blue sky, and grass, and what appeared to be an ancient stone circle.

No one ever wanted to replicate an image of the planet of Freedom with its ice and rock and engineering installations. Dana had, however, lost her virginity in an underwater simulation of the ocean world of Truth, so she did understand something of the planetary appeal, if only as a novelty.

This ridiculous meadow had to be a Valour simulation – from what Dana had heard, the terraformed planet was obsessed with recreating imaginary histories from the olden days of Honour, the planet of origin, in the days before the Warming turned even the northern hemisphere into a place of desert and bushland and dry creek beds. No one had lived on Valour further back than than eight generations, so it seemed unlikely that it would have genuine stone circles – did that make this Artifice meadow a simulation of a simulation? Or just another example of humans kidding themselves that they belonged anywhere but the stars?

The grass made Dana’s feet itch through her boots. She was certain she would not like Valour at all, if it looked anything like this faux-medieval cartoon. Her eyes longed for the plain flat grey walls that were everywhere, back home. Gascons didn’t need to pretend that grass was growing underfoot – they just got on with living their lives in practical, everyday environments.

It wasn’t just the meadow. All of Paris Satellite was trying too hard to impress her, and Dana was over it.

Her would-be murderer, the first of three, lounged against the stone circle. Athos the Musketeer looked less like a pilot and more like a history-themed burlesque performer with those long, luxuriant blond locks and matching beard.

This was so much worse than the pilot from the Moth. How was all that hair not a major safety hazard, with all the cables and plug-ins required for basic flight conditions? Dana glared at him as she approached.

“Ah, the girl from Gascon,” Athos said with a vague sort of wave, not bothering to stir himself. “Forgive me for not rising to the occasion, but my latest med-patch still needs two minutes to complete its clever work. It’s not quite the hour, in any case, and I’m still waiting for my seconds to arrive.”

There was an open bottle on the grass beside him. Was she expected to duel a drunk? Then again, perhaps it might give him an unfair advantage, if he were anaesthetised against the sharp flashburns caused by Duel. The med-patch was a worry too. Much though Dana wanted to survive this encounter, she also didn’t want to end up with a dead Musketeer on her hands.

Dana drew close to him. “If your wound still troubles you, we can postpone…” she suggested.

“None of that, I have my honour to think of!” Athos sat up slightly, grimaced, and lay down again. “That wasn’t two minutes yet, was it?”

“Not even slightly,” she said, not wanting to smile, not at all. God help her if she started to like this fool.

“I hate waiting,” he grumbled.

His comment about seconds only just sank in. Dana glanced around. “You invited others, did you say?”

More people to witness her shame and potentially steal her identity studs if she lost consciousness. Marvellous.

“Of course. You need a second to duel. I always invite two, because my friends are terribly unreliable, and apt to get distracted. Or perhaps that’s just me.” Athos gave Dana a sharp look from beneath his lidded eyes. “You didn’t bring a second?”

“I don’t know anyone on Paris Satellite,” she confessed.

“No one at all?”

“I just got here. I met Commander Treville…”

A look of mild alarm shot across Athos’ face. “Yes, well, don’t invite her. It’s illegal, you know, for us to have these little exchanges.”

“I’m new on station, not an idiot,” Dana snapped.

The med patch made a chiming sound, and Athos leaped to his feet, making a few experimental lunges. “Excellent, all better now!” he exclaimed, then doubled over in a fit of pain. “Fuck it.”

“Sit down,” Dana ordered him, pushing him back down on to the Artifice grass. She flicked open his shirt and peered at the med patch. “Where did you get this thing? Not from the hospice.”

“I may have found it lying around somewhere.” Athos reached for the bottle, but Dana lifted it up quickly and moved it out of his reach. He made a low growling noise in the back of his throat.

“It’s dodgy, however you got it.” She tapped a few experimental codes into the flat patch. “If I put in the code for anti-inflammatory, it reads as a lung purge. There must be a crossed circuit.”

“Are you some sort of doctor, girl from Gascon?” Athos asked her, his face uncomfortably close as she fiddled further with the med-patch.

“No, but I’m good at rewiring bad tech to make it work,” Dana said, biting on her lip as she concentrated. “We have to be, out on the rim. Supply ships don’t come that often, and everything costs – four times as much – THERE.”

The medpatch chimed sweetly. “Skin and blood vessel repair continuing, complete in three minutes, twenty eight seconds,” it announced in a babyish voice.

“Three minutes,” groaned Athos, swooning again. “I might as well be dead.”

“You’re welcome,” said Dana, moving away from him so he could do up his own damned shirt. He had a tattoo of a sunflower there, not far from his wound, and she didn’t want to be caught staring at it.

His eyes brightened as he looked past her. “Ah, there are my seconds now. You’ll like them. Everyone likes them.”

Dana braced herself before she turned, only to discover that the sinking feeling in her gut was justified. It was her lucky day, apparently. Two female pilots – one tall and slender, one short and round, strolled along the grass towards them, with the bright white shape of the Luxembourg Church looming behind.

“Excellent,” said Athos. He waved cheerfully at his friends from where he remained lying on the grass. “Good news, chaps! We can get started as soon as I stop bleeding internally!”

Aramis and Porthos gave odd looks to Athos and then to Dana herself.

“A little early aren’t we?” Porthos drawled.

“Quite a lot early,” Aramis corrected.

“Unless -”

“You don’t mean to say -”

Athos jumped in now. “What are you two playing at? You’re acting like a Love and Asteroids double act.”

Porthos broke first, laughing uproariously. Aramis was a little more reserved. “Don’t tell me this is the same young clod who crashed into you, Athos? And the one who damaged your new belt, Pol? My, baby doll, three challenges in one day. You have been busy.” She eyed Dana up and down as if she had underestimated her, or possibly as if she were checking her out.

Dana bristled at that. “I challenged no one, Captain Aramis. I simply accepted…”

“You don’t mean you’re fighting all three of us?” Athos broke in.

“Not all at once,” she said impatiently. “I wasn’t expecting Captain Porthos for another hour, and Captain Aramis for two. It’s not my fault no one can keep to a schedule.”

“I think my feelings are hurt,” said Athos after a long moment. “Didn’t you think I’d give you a good enough challenge on my own?” His beard twitched.

Dana scowled, hating the way they made her feel so flustered. As if she was nothing but a joke. “Shall we get started? Or haven’t you finished cooking yet?”

Athos tapped his med-patch. “Almost done. So you’re fighting three of us, without seconds. Aramis my love, you might as well put your feet up, it’s hardly likely you’ll get your turn.”

“I can think of somewhere to put my feet,” Aramis said, nudging him with her boot. “Are you getting up, or is the kid going to have to fight you from there?” She frowned down at him. “You are mended, aren’t you?”

The med-patch beeped its approval.

“Up I come!” Athos whooped, leaping to his feet with a smoothness that belied his previous damage. He gave Aramis a smacking kiss on the mouth, then looked past her to Dana. “Good patch up, sweetness. I can see you’d be useful to have around if I weren’t honour bound to give you a right smacking.”

“Manners,” said Porthos, arranging herself against one of the stone monoliths as if it were the most comfortable of armchairs. She reached around for Athos’ abandoned bottle, and took a swig. “What’s your name, little one?”

Dana was sick of being talked to like she was a child. “My name is Dana Amelie D’Artagnan of Gascon Station,” she said between gritted teeth. “Can we get on with this, please?” She looked from one Musketeer to another, wondering which of them had brought the equipment with them. “Well? This is a Duel isn’t it?”

“So it is,” said Athos in a low purr that reminded her he was more than the lazy buffoon he had pretended to be. He had to be more than that, to fly Musket-Class here in the centre of the solar system, even if his parents had bought him a posh accent. “En garde then, little one. Let’s see what you’re made of.”

His hand flicked against his belt, catching up the baton that swung there, and to Dana’s horror it flickered into life, revealing a long, silver streak of metal where empty air had previously been.

A sword. A genuine sword. These crazy bastards didn’t take pilot drugs and throw imaginary spaceships at each other. They fought their duels with actual edged weapons. Which explained, of course, where Athos got that wound of his, and why Treville was so pissed off about it.

She was going to die right here today, with a long stabby weapon impaled in her body.

It was impossible to guess what Paris Satellite was trying to tell her now.

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, visit my Patreon page. Pledges can earn rewards such as ebooks, extra content, dedications and the naming of spaceships. My next funding milestone ($200 a month) will unlock a special Christmas story.

Musketeers Are All For Love (1993)

Time for another Musketeer Media Monday!

If you really, truly love The Three Musketeers (1993) and hold it in your heart as a great nostalgic fun time, as I once did, you may not want to read this article.

For lo, the thing I most dreaded has come to pass.

And the suck fairy is a cruel, cruel wench.

The 90’s Three Musketeers was my first introduction to the characters, and I loved them dearly. The Golden Age of Musketeers, truly, is 15. In particular, I seem to recall, I adored Kiefer Sutherland’s Athos, Rebecca De Mornay’s Milady, and Oliver Platt’s Porthos. I regularly forgot who played Aramis, and was always surprised on rewatching to discover that it was in fact Charlie Sheen.

(In retrospect, not knowing anything about Charlie Sheen makes this a much better movie)

I always got a kick out of Gabrielle Anwar being Queen Anne (Press Gang actor ahoy!), I never really saw why everyone loved Tim Curry so much (this is an endemic problem for me), and Chris O’Donnell’s chin is VERY LARGE AND PUNCHABLE on the big screen.

But all in all, my memories were happy. Perhaps I should have left them be…

The Three Musketeers (1993): A Rewatch

There’s something about the style and tone of this movie’s opening scenes that makes me think that it really wants to be the next Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

Was it the scenery chewing opening gambit of Tim Curry’s Cardinal, or the gratuitously random prison and torture scenes? Was it the Sheriff-and-Guy-of-Gisborne relationship between the Cardinal and Rochefort? At that point I stopped, checked IMDB and realised that this Rochefort is in fact also Guy of Gisborne. He has apparently stolen Alan Rickman’s costumes for this movie.

Raeli (my nine year old Musketeer fangirl in the making) was convinced that this Rochefort was the same one as in Musketeers In An Exciting Adventure With Airships (2011) and it was hard to argue with that. There are actually several aspects of that movie that made me wonder if it was in fact a remake of the 1993 iteration rather than an adaptation in its own right… but that’s actually not fair, as airships aside, the 2011 version has a lot more narrative adherence in its script than 1993.

If 1993 did anything for me, it was to show me that I was being a bit too hard on Airships 2011.

Of course, what really what I was thinking during the opening scenes of this movie was: what, Paul McGann is in this? I just saw his name in the credits. Who on earth does Paul McGann play… OMFG PAUL MCGANN!

Because I didn’t have to wait for long. There he was, in long red hair, duelling D’Artagnan as a horrid, girding fop who uses far too much of his face. I couldn’t even admire the fencing, as I was too busy staring in horror at the shrill pantomime character that Paul McGann had decided to inflict on me. I may never look at the Eighth Doctor the same way again.

Though I did laugh when his character Girard howled that his brothers were going to beat up D’Artagnan and a whole bunch of chaps on horses appeared on the horizon, at which point my honey snarked “There’s the rest of the McGann brothers.”

Oh, Chris O’Donnell. I had no idea who you were when I first watched this movie, and I hated you then. The thing about D’Artagnan is, you don’t have to like him in order to appreciate a Musketeer movie. Which is a good thing as he’s usually the most annoying character.

I actually like this one a bit better than I used to, either because I’ve mellowed with age (seems unlikely) or because this time around I have noticed that he’s rather good at fencing. This may prove important later in the movie.

Okay, is that Michael York as a cranky Musketeer in the first Musketeer crowd scene? Because it looks a LOT like Michael York under that beard and hat, and that would be a splendidly awesome cameo given his starring role in the 1973-74 Musketeer movies (which will also form part of my Musketeer Media Monday series). On the other hand, there’s no sign of him on IMDB so perhaps I was imagining it.

While this movie takes insane levels of liberty with the plot, I do think it’s a good filmic choice to have the Cardinal actually close down the Musketeers in the first act, so that it’s only our boys who keep the flag flying. Having said that, the blue costumes are adorable and it makes me very sad to see them all taking off their pretty tunics.

It’s not surprising that the Musketeers have always translated so well to a visual medium – the colour coding always works so well, with the Musketeers in blue and white, the Cardinal and his men in red, Rochefort always in black, and so on. It looks great on screen and helps to keep them all separate. It also helps to remind us of the quite important plot/structural point that the ones in blue are directly loyal to the king, while the ones in red are only indirectly in service to the king, via the Church.

The costume also works well in the ‘how they met’ scene which I do think is done quite well here – D’Artagnan’s arrogance leading him into a duel with all three Musketeers. When they reveal their blue-and-whites in the confrontation scene, he is so crestfallen to realise he has insulted his heroes, it’s a bit adorable.

This is also one of the last points at which the movie resembles a Three Musketeers plot, so that’s nice.

I did enjoy the part where Rochefort and Jussac turn up to arrest the Musketeers, and I realised all of a sudden that Jussac is ALSO PLAYED BY PAUL MCGANN. It’s a masterpiece of bizarre, apparently due to a last minute dropout of the actor cast in this second role. This is where McGann’s overdone foppish performance ten minutes ago (and occasionally returning to punctuate the movie with shrill cries of “D’ARTAGNAN!”) pays off, because he plays Jussac totally straight, mostly in mid- or long-shot, and with a flat Californian accent. And I had to rewind and look very carefully to be absolutely sure it was him.

So we get another McGann/O’Donnell fight scene and it’s a beauty, with their ‘duelling up on this wall’ routine used to draw attention from the less competent fencing of the senior Musketeers down on the ground. I have to say, O’Donnell’s commitment to the sword stuff definitely helps to redeem his otherwise insufferable character.

What of the Musketeers themselves, though?

ATHOS – still pretty awesome, I have to say. Kiefer Sutherland hits all the necessary beats of the character, which is to say drunk, angsty, melancholy, sarcastic and occasionally charming. I still love him, so that’s nice. Cynical, battered, and the person I most want to watch on my screen during this movie. He’s not in it as much as I remembered, though.

PORTHOS – hmm. Oliver Platt is still a fun, entertaining Porthos, but he does suffer quite a lot in comparison to Ray Stevenson and Howard Charles. So he’s no longer my favourite. It was also hard to ignore this time that while he does indeed still get the best lines, they are still not very GOOD lines, so that’s something of a low bar. Still, Platt gets bonus points for being the person most obviously enjoying himself in this movie.

ARAMIS – ugh. Really, ugh. Charlie Sheen has apparently become one of those actors that I apparently can’t watch in anything now. It doesn’t help that he appears to be playing the role in the least nuanced way possible. Look, he’s religious, look, he’s a ladies’ man! Apparently, Charlie Sheen’s commitments to Hot Shots Part Deux meant he was not able to take part in the fencing lessons that the other actors had for 6 weeks before filming. This is very, very obvious in the finished result, which doesn’t do his Aramis any favours.

Despite the ridiculously simplified plot, I do rather like that this new version of the story repeats the trope of the Musketeers (especially Porthos and Aramis) getting ahead of whatever is happening, disguising themselves and then pulling a reveal. It’s fun and very Musketeery even if it does rely on a touch of ‘having read the script ahead of time’. However, my general annoyance at Sheen’s Aramis does make me cranky that he gets so many ‘hero’ moments in the final act when I’d rather be watching Kiefer Sutherland.

The presence of Sheen also adds an extra skeevy aspect to the ‘let me tell you about wenching, young man,” scene in which Porthos and Aramis pass women back and forth like they are a bottle of wine, in order to ‘teach’ D’Artagnan that Wench Is A Verb. We can pretend this is a touch of historically authentic grottiness but let’s face it, there are plenty of 80’s and 90’s contemporary films which show a similar attitude to women. It was really uncomfortable to watch but no more so than Wayne’s World or whatever. Wenches = sexy lamps.

While we’re talking about gender stuff… do we remember how in Musketeers In An Exciting Adventure With Airships, Constance was reduced to being a pretty lady in waiting who was damselled so thoroughly that Rochefort tied her to the front of an airship as a figurehead? Well, the portrayal of Constance in 1993 made me think quite fondly of how she was treated in 2011! At least the 2011 version got to wear D’Artagnan’s hat, say at least three sarcastic things, and BE IN THE MOVIE in between all that being taken hostage and threatened.

Whereas 1993 Constance, played by Julie Delpy who is lovely and has a proper French accent, is given quite literally nothing to do. I can’t tell if her part was cut out or if she was never given anything to start with, but these are her scenes:

1. She meets D’Artagnan while on horseback in a vaguely promising scene that allows her to be feisty, self-assured and a bit flirty. They never talk again.

2. She talks about how hot she is for D’Artagnan while helping the queen in her bath.

3. She turns up briefly, on the same staircase as D’Artagnan is duelling with Rochefort.

4. She snogs D’Artagnan at the end.

It gets worse, because while I expect a Musketeers movie to not do very well with Constance (the whole thing about her being D’Artagnan’s married landlady AND a lady in waiting, and getting involved in political schemes and espionage to protect her Queen is all layered with a bit too much nuance for Hollywood to cope with), this film’s treatment of Milady is even more awful.

Milady is one of the most interesting female villains of all time, and Rebecca De Mornay’s version was the first I ever came across (except, possibly, the version in Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds who is a saucy cat). I had very fond memories of her, and promised my eye-rolling nine year old daughter (who is convinced that the Airships version is the best ever and cannot be matched) that this movie had a very good Milady.

Halfway through, Raeli wailed, “This Milady you said was good, what good stuff does she do?”

And that was when I realised, this Milady does NOTHING.

As with Julie Delpy’s Constance, this is entirely not the actress’s fault. Rebecca De Mornay plays the icy blonde Milady very well, given appallingly little to work with.

Oh they let the whole Athos-and-his-wife story play out, complete with dramatic reveal of the fleur-de-lis and an almost bedroom scene with D’Artagnan, but what we don’t get is any of the actual criminal antics of Milady. The revised plot has her delivering a letter. No jewels, no theft, no proper espionage hijinks. We are told about her past crimes but apart from the apparent death of one of her husbands, we never hear what those crimes are. We certainly never see her doing anything worse than playing messenger for the Cardinal as he attempts to make a treaty with England. Her job could be replaced by one of his pigeons.

The thing about minimising Milady’s crimes (and her competence) is, if you don’t show us what an evil person she is, and how damned dangerous she is to keep around, then you end up on a clifftop with a sad, vulnerable lady facing execution, and the Musketeers looking like COMPLETE DICKS for standing back and letting it happen.

When Athos does interrupt the execution, it’s mostly to talk about himself, and then Milady hurls herself off a cliff which everyone seems to think is the best result all around.

This included Raeli who had been chanting “Jump! Jump!”

Sigh.

Now, I know that The The Three Musketeers is pure bromance. It’s a manly story about manly men and their macho doings, and that’s fine – it’s a story of unapologetic swagger, and that’s one of the things I really like about it. It’s also, of course, why I thought it would be so very interesting to gender-swap the story.

HOWEVER, if you present a version of The Three Musketeers in any medium which removes the ‘ladies being excellent at espionage’ aspect of the story, and THEN rework the plot so it has nothing at all to do with the queen, then what you have is a 1990’s version of a 19th century novel set in the 18th century that is actually more sexist and bloke-centred than the original. Well done, that’s quite an achievement.

I did still really enjoy Gabrielle Anwar’s Queen Anne this time around. She manages to be integral to the movie despite the plot no longer having much to do with her at all. She plays the part beautifully, often in scenes where she is given hardly anything to say – I particularly like the scene where the young and hopeless king stands up to the Cardinal about disbanding his Musketeers, and she looks so proud of him and is then downcast when he leaves without acknowledging her. Also, later, the two of them whispering together about how to deal with the fact that kindly old Uncle Cardinal is blatantly evil is a very cute scene. Slowly we see them shift from being separate people to being a team, and she makes up for her oddly wooden young co-star.

Sigh. Okay. It’s probably time to talk about the Cardinal. Now, I’ve never been a particular fan of Tim Curry as Villain (with the exception of Rocky Horror Picture Show, Muppets Treasure Island and It), and this means that the one aspect of this movie that most people rave about (well at least Tim Curry’s in it) is the aspect I usually enjoy least. This time around, I found the scenes with the Cardinal especially unpleasant, mostly because of the really creepy sexual predator elements added to a character who seems at other times to be played for comic relief – it’s a weird combination, all the more because it’s a Disney movie.

The only scenes I liked with the Cardinal were those where his cloak was allowed to do most of the acting, and the one with the pigeons where he says “All for one and more for me,” clearly on the understanding that this is going in the trailer. The rest of it is mostly him staring at Milady’s bosom and sexually harassing the Queen. It’s not fun, and feels particularly out of place in a Disney movie. All I can take from this as a positive is that it makes Aramis and Porthos appear slightly less lecherous by comparison.

Ahem. Let’s get back to positives. The action sequences are mostly quite good, as you’d expect from a Hollywood adaptation. Plenty of swords and carriage chases and quips. Athos pouring alcohol on a carriage, setting fire to it with a musket and then sending it rattling slowly towards a convenient pile of gunpowder barrels was entertaining if silly. I enjoyed the excessive use of parrying weapons. The slow escape via gondola at the end was amusing, though maybe not for the reasons they thought it would be.

As I discussed at the beginning, the costumes add a lot to this film – the final battle in which all the red Cardinal’s men face off against our three plucky boys in blue, and then a whole bunch more Musketeers reveal their blue tunics, looks great on screen. The colour coding works very well in the battle scene, like one big football game – directors of battles should take note!

Also, I like Rochefort a lot, especially when it becomes clear that he has chucked away the script and is stealing liberally from The Princess Bride (a thing that actually annoyed me when Athos did it in the 2011 movie). He’s my favourite villain in this, which makes me feel sad about Milady and the Cardinal all over again. But kind of pleased for him, because poor old Rochefort sometimes gets forgotten in the crush.

Raeli’s final verdict: “A lot less airships. They traded them for horses.”

This is surprisingly generous considering she rolled her eyes and abandoned the movie halfway through only to return for Milady’s execution scene which she enjoyed rather too much.

It’s all a bit depressing, really. I didn’t want this Musketeer Media Mondays series to be a whole lot of me poking holes in Musketeer adaptations while promoting my own. It’s just… sigh. I really wanted to still like this movie. Truly, the suck fairy is a cruel mistress.

Next month I promise to write about a Musketeer adaptation that I really genuinely am completely in love with. Or the Barbie movie. One or the other.

Galactic Suburbia 102 Show Notes

New episode is up and ready to be downloaded or streamed!

In which Alex and Tansy debrief Alisa on their ContinuumX hijinks, and a crowdfunding scheme unfolds… please admire our lovely new logo thanks to longtime listener Terri and her ninja cupcake skills

News

Ditmars, Norma, etc etc. Con report! Book launches, panels…

Literary Guests of Honour: Ambelin Kwaymullina & Jim C Hines (speeches not available online yet, will link when we can)

Check out also the great Continuum X Twitter Storify

As mentioned by Ambelin in her GOH speech, the Australia Council guidelines on writing about Indigenous culture and people, which were formulated by Indigenous people.

What Culture Have we Consumed?

Alisa: The Gods of Wheat Street; Vaginal Fantasy (The Lions of Al-Rassan, Guy Gavriel Kay);

Alex: Kitty and Cadaver, Narrelle M Harris; Vanity and Valour, Mary Robinette Kowal; Vox Day and Ted Chiang; Edge of Tomorrow (and X Men: Days of Future Past)



Tansy: Lightspeed Magazine Women Destroy Science Fiction, Seanan Maguire “Each to Each.”

And our cake logo winners! It’s Terri! Because we never knew how much we needed to be a cupcake until we became one. We hope we were delicious.

New way to support Galactic Suburbia via our Patreon page – help us cover our running costs, & if we hit $50 per podcast we will commit to regular Spoilerific Club podcasts, plus other incentives.

You may also be interested in these other Patreon campaigns:

Tansy’s Musketeer Space project.

Terry Frost’s Paleo-Cinema Podcast page, also inspired by the crowdfunding panel at ContinuumX!

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

ROBOTECH REWATCH 3: To Be In Love

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

Previous episodes:

1 – So Much For World Peace

2 – Who Put Pluto There?

Episode 4. The Long Wait

Gloval feels guilty about the mess he’s made, and he and the crew set about rescuing the survivors from the civilian shelters and aircraft carriers. It’s a bit of a massacre, frankly, dead bodies everywhere, and it’s only because the story moves so quickly that everyone doesn’t sink into deep depression.

Meanwhile, Rick and Minmei play house in the bowels of the giant space fortress, stuck without food, water or communications.

Roy is cranky at Gloval’s insistence that he stay at his post instead of going to find the missing Rick Hunter.

“Yes Captain, whatever you say, I’m sure that 70,000 civilians are more important than my friend.”

Roy Fokker, not quite getting how sarcasm works.

Here is what I love about Robotech: after an episode which was mostly ships shooting at each other, we get an episode made up largely of flirtation, character development and coffee breaks. Lisa and the bridge crew talking out their situation over coffee is a lovely scene. Also, some pretty major changes happen over the fortnight or so that Rick and Minmei are stranded (spoiler: they don’t starve to death in this episode), but we don’t see much of it – instead, the rescue of the civilians, the rebuilding of their city inside the space fortress, and the general populace adapting to the horrors and limitations of their situation all happen mostly off screen.

And are summed up during refreshments.

“I used to be a junior nature scout.”

Rick Hunter, pointedly not mentioning whether he got the orienteering badge.

So, Rick and Minmei are stuck. Rick has to use all his survival skills, and Minmei has to develop some from scratch. Day after day, he goes for a walk to find a way out, and fails. Given that they don’t need the ship for shelter, I’m a little confused as to why they don’t go together and just keep moving in one direction, but of course that’s not the point. The plot wants them to be stuck here. It’s romantic.

Together, the teenagers burst a water main to get a drink, and Minmei promptly decides to take a shower. Rick is not invited.

UNEXPECTED NAKED MINMEI – okay, I don’t remember that butt shot in the original TV broadcast. Just saying. Ah, this is the famous anime fan service, yes? I can’t help wondering if there are going to be any other surprise nude shots which somehow mysteriously failed to make their way on to the ABC screenings, along with all those big knockers jokes I never knew were in The Goodies until the DVDS came out.

I like Minmei a lot more when she’s mocking Rick for his lack of pathfinding skills than her ‘duh, what’s a compass’ act. Really, at this stage, these two totally deserve each other. They’re so innocent it hurts.

Minmei cutting notches in Rick’s plane’s brand new paint job to keep track of the days they’re stuck there is, however, one of my favourite things about Minmei ever.

In other news, this is where we first hear about Minmei’s aspirations to be an entertainer: acting, singing and dancing! Something about this makes me think it might be a bit significant to her future, hmm? Just to make sure you know she’s not really one of those terrible career women, though (Minmei is, like many of the characters, surprisingly retro in her world view), she assures Rick that actually her greatest ambition is to be a bride. So that’s all right, then.

The look on Rick’s face in response to this suggests that he has read a lot of Regency romance novels, and is a bit worried that sharing a crashed plane tent with Minmei for a week or two means he’s going to have to marry her.

Meanwhile, Rick has not managed to find their way out of the level on which they are stuck. With their supplies running low (extended only thanks to Minmei’s excellent wife skills), he finally comes up with a plan to put on his flight helmet, hold his breath, and go out the airlock in the hopes he will float towards people who can help them.

Minmei is dubious, which does rather suggest she isn’t the one holding the stupid ball this week.

They are so royally screwed.

An unexpected giant tuna floats past, and Rick manages to grab it through the airlock (well, half of it). His adventure costs them a “chance” of escape, as his suit is ripped. Quite possibly, that tuna saved their lives. Also, Minmei’s cooking skills prove to be superhuman as she manages somehow to find a pan large enough for fish head soup.

Twelve days into their long vigil, Minmei cracks and starts singing “To Be In Love.” Yes, songs! The use of only a few lyrics over and over formed a kind of repeated meme in Robotech, making us think that Minmei had a substantial repertoire. I may take the opportunity to note how true this is, over the rewatch.

“To be in love, must be the sweetest feeling that a girl can feel.”

The rocket fuel is running out, and so is their food. Minmei thinks they are going to die – and weeps over never getting to be a bride. Rick falls into her elaborate snare by suggesting they playact a scene.

“Well I guess I should be the groom, huh?”

Rick Hunter, you should be so lucky.

After a half-hearted ceremony and a lot more tears, the two lean in for what might possibly be the least sexy kiss of all time. In a last minute save that suggests the SDF-1 herself is not a Rick/Minmei shipper, the ceiling explodes. To their shock, torches flash down at them, and they have been rescued – by the Mayor! Quite by accident, the construction machines rebuilding the city have dug into their level. Scooped back to reality, Rick and Minmei survey the new version of Macross City. Minmei’s Aunt’s restaurant and their house are back where they should be – even the wall Rick destroyed is repaired!

As Minmei enjoys the attention of her friends and family, Rick collapses from exhaustion, starvation, and mild disappointment that he missed out on a snog. This is, literally, the story of his life.

Will Minmei still like him, now he’s no longer the last man on Earth?

Maintain communications on this channel! The Robotech Rewatch will return next week! Find out more about the Musketeer Space project and how you can support it here at Patreon.

Friday Links Destroys Science Fiction

This lovely piece by Amal El Mohtar places Women Destroy Science Fiction editor Christie Yant in conversation with other important women of SF’s history.

The Toast on How Not To Review Women’s Writing

Charles A Tan wrote a great piece on When Diversity Is Not Enough for Skiffy and Fanty.

Ben Peek is doing the publicity rounds with his new epic fantasy novel The Godless (which sounds amazing) including this interview.

The Tiptree webpage have published Nike Sulway’s acceptance speech for Rupetta.

One of my favourite bits of gossip passed on during Continuum X was this Canadian news piece about a man who built a massive replica of an iconic baseball stadium out of Lego. The reason it was gossipworthy of course is not just for the mighty feat itself, but because the bloke in question is Steven of Radio Free Skaro, and one of the elite team of Verity Husbands.

Musketeer Space Part 4: How They Met And Other Minor Tragedies

Musketeer Space is a weekly serialised novel by Tansy Rayner Roberts.

An archive of previous chapters and associated blog posts can be found here at the Musketeer Space Table of Contents. If you would like to learn more about how I’m using crowdfunding to sponsor this project, check out my Patreon page.

Musketeers meeting each other! Are you excited? I’m excited! Thanks to everyone who came up to me at Continuum to talk about the project, to squee about Musketeers, or to ask about crowdfunding your own projects. I rather suspect there may be a spate of Patreon campaigns for me to promote over the next few months… I ended up stepping up in Tehani’s place at the crowdfunding panel with Ben McKenzie, Laura Wilkinson and others, and we had a great time talking about the different platforms, and the highs and lows of running a crowdfunding campaign whether large or small.

Speaking of Continuum I have also been invited to be Guest of Honour at their convention next year which is ridiculously happymaking and will be my first time as GoH at a science fiction event! By then, of course, Musketeer Space will almost be finished…

Ahem, but you’re not here for that. You’re here to meet some Musketeers! Let’s get cracking.

PREVIOUSLY IN MUSKETEER SPACE: Dana D’Artagnan came to Paris Satellite to join the Musketeer division of the Royal Space Fleet but it’s all going wrong. Oh, so wrong.

PART 1: Reasons to Hate Moths

PART 2: Paris, At Last

PART 3: Shouting at Musketeers

NOW READ ON!

So far, Dana’s day had been a colossal waste of time. After years of working towards it, she had finally reached the space station of her dreams, only to have those dreams squashed by the reality.

The Musketeers weren’t taking new pilots.

Even if they were, she wouldn’t be top of their list.

She had travelled all this way from the other end of the solar system, sold the ship her Papa had restored with such pride and joy, failed to live up to her Mama’s reputation… it was all such a mess.

Dana could not let herself be angry at Commander Treville, or even those scruffbag Musketeers who had the best job in the galaxy and seemed to spend all their time pissing about like naughty schoolgirls.

But as she stood on the gantry, looking down across the beautiful ornamental plaza and the pilot in the bright violet flight-suit, she knew who she could be angry at.

That arsehole with the long, beautiful sweep of hair, who had tricked Dana into thinking she wasn’t a pilot, then beaten her painfully in a game of Duel, and robbed her blind. The one who named her embarrassing ship a “Buttercup.” Ro, if that was really her name.

Oh yes, Dana could be angry. As if there was even a choice.

She all but flew down the escalator, dodging people this way and that as she ran across the plaza. She circled around into what looked like a clear area, but nearly collided with a transport cart bringing cryo-tubes in through a large door marked Hospice.

Impatient, Dana waited until they were clear and then bolted forward, only to crash into a man as he stepped out of the Hospice doors. He cried in pain at the impact, clutching his shoulder, and Dana bounced off his chest, landing heavily on the ground.

“Sorry,” she said breathlessly. “I’m after this villainous cow of a— Oh!”

She knew this man. It was Captain Athos the Musketeer, still sporting his frivolous golden beard, and apparently bleeding once again from the shoulder.

Possibly that last part was her fault.

“Shouldn’t you still be in the hospice?” she blurted out.

He growled at her, clutching his shoulder. There was no charming twinkle as he had shown back in the office of Commander Treville. “With an accent like yours, kid, shouldn’t you have better manners?”

“I didn’t mean to bump you,” Dana said impatiently, scrambling to her feet. “And I said I was sorry. But I must catch her -”

Athos reached out and grabbed her with his good arm, squeezing her shoulder painfully. “If you’re in a hurry now, sweetness, when will you be in less of a hurry? We have a code of conduct on Paris Satellite, and it sounds like you need a fucking lesson in manners.”

Damn it all, that was fighting language. Dana felt sick to the stomach at the thought of Duelling again so soon after the last time, but she was anxious to get after that pilot before she lost her.

“I’m new on station,” she said coldly, removing his hand from her arm. “Where are such things usually done?”

“Level 5, Alpha square behind the Luxembourg,” suggested Captain Athos. “1500 hours.”

“Done! Fine. Whatever.”

Dana spun away from him, picking up speed again as she tore on through the plaza, desperately hoping that she had not lost her prey.

There was the violet flight suit, disappearing into a narrow walkway. Dana ducked and weaved around the crowd, closing the distance between them.

She saw another Musketeer captain from Treville’s office, the curvy and cheerful woman called Porthos, still wearing that splendid custom-made coat and bedazzled belt. It was matched now with a jewelled turban to conceal her pilot’s buzz cut. What a peacock! Dana could not imagine why people bothered with such fashionable fripperies when there were ships to pilot. Porthos stood out from her group of friends, laughing and making expansive gestures as she shared a joke.

Dana measured the distance with her eye between Captain Porthos and the narrow walkway and judged that she could just dart in behind the Musketeer, and not lose even a second’s running time in her pursuit.

As she scampered past, though, Porthos swung her arm up and around and accidentally smacked Dana in the face. Dana’s arm whirled around automatically to slap her away, and the two became tangled in Porthos’ coat.

For the second time in only a few minutes, Dana hit the ground of the plaza, hard enough to knock the wind out of her. As she tried to scramble up and keep going, she heard a horrible ripping sound, and was smacked back down.

Her face grazed on something against the cool artificial tiles, and she lifted her head to find that several diamante studs had detached themselves from Porthos’ belt and were now embedded in her cheek and neck, burrowing themselves happily into their new home.

“Thieving cow!” thundered Porthos, lunging at Dana. It was alarming to see quite so much cleavage bearing down upon her, and the last thing she wanted was another fight.

“Ow!” Dana replied. “Take them back, I don’t want them!” That was it, then. The thief in the violet flight suit was long gone, and Dana wasn’t sure she even had enough anger left to confront her, not after this. Maybe Paris Satellite was trying to tell her to stay out of fights.

Paris Satellite was not subtle.

“What do you want to go thundering around like that for?” grumbled Porthos, wrenching the studs back with far more force than necessary. They made a popping sound as they came free of Dana’s skin. “What are you, twelve?”

“You hit me first,” Dana protested, and one of Porthos’ friends laughed.

“She has a point, Pol,” noted another.

Captain Porthos leaned her heaving bosom even more threateningly towards Dana, who wondered if it had been registered as a deadly weapon. “Want a chance to hit me back, sunshine? Since you’re so keen on making friends.”

Ah, so what Paris was actually telling her was that she needed to get into more fights. Again, without subtlety. Wonderful.

“1600 hours, behind the Luxembourg,” Dana said with a sigh.

Porthos smiled, straightening her turban. When she relaxed, she looked like a satisfied cat. “The very thing, pet,” she said, as if they were arranging a coffee date with shoes and gossip, or whatever it was that girlfriends did together.

“Wear your second best coat,” Dana suggested and took off before the Musketeer could swipe at her . A burst of laughter followed her as she ran off up the walkway, and she was certain it wasn’t “Pol” Porthos they were laughing at.

This place made her feel like a twelve year old, all scraped knees and awkward elbows. She was starting to hate Paris.

It was no use running. The walkway was empty, and Dana trudged along it, keeping her eye out for her prey despite having little hope left. Other walkways branched off from this one every twenty metres or so, and the pilot from Meung could have vanished along any of those branches.

Dana stopped walking altogether and let the moving floor beneath her feet hum her forward, through the echoing tunnel. Signs suggested that this was a good direction to go in order to find lodgings, though she had no idea which hotels or boarding levels were recommended, and which were likely to suck up her credit under false pretences.

She had been an idiot. A double idiot. Not only was she jobless and homeless, but now she was supposed to fight two of the Royal Musketeers, today. Bare knuckles were too much to hope for – and she wasn’t convinced she could take either of them – no, it had to have been Duel they hinted at.

Duel, the pilot’s drug of choice. That had gone so well for her last time.

Dana’s dreams of the new life she would build on Paris Satellite had been royally fucked over. At this rate, she’d be on a shuttle home with her brain bleeding out her ears by supper time.

The walkway hummed directly into another brightly lit plaza, smaller than the other, though with just as many people hanging around. Lots of pilots here too, though there was a higher percentage of civilians as they got further from the space dock. This was a recreation hub by the looks of it, with all manner of virtual sports and games being played out in the open.

In the centre of the plaza, a sonic fountain burst forth with light and sound. Dana felt a ping in the visitor’s stud she had been issued, and her senses flooded with options. She could play reality tennis, conduct an imaginary orchestra, or throw herself into an anti-grav well to practice her swimming strokes. Oh, look, Prince Alek’s Zero G TeamJoust was going to be televised shortly, and she could hire an implant to insert herself virtually into the body of his android teammate.

Everything cost credit points, and the money left over from the sale of the Buttercup wasn’t going to magically increase any time soon. She had to find lodgings, not screw about here.

Still, if the Duel burned out enough of her synapses, Dana would either be dead or in need of hospitalisation by the end of the day shift. So her lack of lodgings would actually be a bonus.

A cluster of Musketeers in their bright blue-and-whites lounged near the sonic fountain with a couple of fellows in Pigeon grey, laughing and chatting together. Dana felt a tug on her heart. That should be her. It was all she had ever wanted, since she was old enough to understand her mother’s madcap stories.

One for all and all for one, and all that bollocks. Everything she’d ever believed about Musketeer camaraderie was here, illustrated in blue and white.

Aramis, the third of the pilots from Treville’s office, stood head and shoulders above her friends, conversing with ease. She was so graceful and clever-looking, exactly the kind of Musketeer that Dana longed to be. Unlike Porthos, she had not succumbed to vanity away from her ship – her braids still remained tightly pinned on top of her head, as if she was ready to run to action at a moment’s notice.

Athos was quite obviously a ruffian with pretensions to aristocracy – or an aristocrat with pretensions to ruffianity, Dana wasn’t sure which – and that Porthos woman was a complete preening egotist. But Aramis was the sensible one, perhaps. Sensible enough to broker peace between her friends and the idiot Gascon who had an appointment to duel with them in a few hours?

Dana made up her mind to try. She was no coward, but the last thing she wanted was to get in a pissing contest over her prider.

The thief from Meung had taught her that much, though she refused to be grateful for it.

As Dana approached the friendly group, she saw that Aramis had her boot firmly on a photosilk that must have fallen from the pocket of her flight suit. No one would knowingly tread on a silk like that – it risked damaging the fibres, and like everything else on Paris Satellite, a replacement would not come cheap.

That was her in.

“Hello again,” Dana said politely, stopping a little away from the group as if she had only just seen them. “We haven’t exactly been introduced, Captain Aramis. But you’ve dropped something there.”

Aramis resisted Dana’s friendly overture with a chill in her voice. “You’re mistaken,” she said firmly. Her smoky eyes gave no sign that she even recognised Dana from earlier in Treville’s office.

Oh, space dung, what had Dana done now?

It was too late for her to take it back, to keep breezily walking as if she hadn’t meant to hover. One of the Pigeons gave Aramis a friendly shove, and snatched up the silk which proved to display a collection of intimate images, each fading into another, of a very attractive white woman with bright red hair.

“Aramis you devil,” he said, choking with laughter and waving the photosilk around to make sure everyone got a good look. “When you said you were friends with Captain Dubois, we didn’t know you meant JUST GOOD FRIENDS.”

Captain Aramis sent Dana a fierce look, as sharp as a slap. “It’s not mine,” she said, grabbing the silk back. “But it obviously belongs to Dubois, so I’ll give it back to her first chance I get. She won’t want you sex fiends staring at her Dyson spheres.”

“I bet you’ll give it to her,” snorted the other Pigeon, and most of her friends fell about in fits of laughter.

One Musketeer, a sleek fellow with his head shaven clean, gave Aramis a dirty look. “Or I could pass it on to her husband,” he said pointedly. “Since he’s my engie.”

Marriage contracts, Dana remembered. On the outer stations, such things were treated pretty casually, as they had been in the olden days. But Paris Satellite was the hub of ‘civilisation.’ Church opinion counted for a lot, especially since the Regent’s rise to power. The Cardinal had supported the Regent’s claim to the solar system over that of her three brothers purely because she swore the same public commitment to righteous morality that the Regents before her had so dramatically tried and failed to maintain.

Faith, obedience and the sanctity of contracts. You could marry anyone you liked in this solar system, for as long as you liked – even aliens, if that was your kink – and when your contract ran out it was no harm, no foul. But publicly breaking a marriage contract before its time was up was enough to ruin anyone, rich or poor, Regent or Musketeer Captain.

A public commitment to making divorce all but impossible could not help but lead to an excessive rise in adultery – that stood to reason. But the political climate right now meant that what went on behind closed doors was enough to get you fired, publicly humiliated, or possibly even arrested, if you were careless enough to be caught.

Dana had just outed a Musketeer captain she barely knew and another she had never met as adulterers. So much for not making today any worse.

“Don’t worry,” Aramis said, her hands stiffly in her pockets. “I’ll take care of it. Discreetly, yeah?”

Her friends cuffed her around the shoulders, continuing to give her a hard time, but Aramis arched her neck at them and laughed it off, teasing them back about their own scandals.

Dana tried to sneak away, agonised with embarrassment. How was she supposed to know that the silk would cause so much trouble? She should never have left Gascon Station. There was no welcome for her among the Musketeers, not in the way had craved since she was a kid sitting on her Mama’s knee, listening to stories about madcap adventures and eternal friendship.

She did not belong here. Treville had made it clear there was no place for her. Why couldn’t she get it into her own thick skull?

Dana tensed as she heard sudden boot steps behind her and then an arm hooked painfully around her neck.

“Well, that was a fine little scene,” Captain Aramis whispered, smiling through her teeth as if she and Dana were genuine BFFs. Her arm, which might look casually friendly to anyone else, squeezed tighter. “Who sent you after me, baby doll?”

“I’m so sorry,” Dana whispered back, unable even to pretend she was not miserable. “I’m an idiot, and I didn’t think.”

“Thinking was most definitely absent,” said Aramis, flicking Dana in the ear with one beautifully manicured fingernail. “Next time you see someone blatantly trying to hide evidence with their boot, how about you leave them to it? Unless you’ve got an arrest warrant for me. Have you an arrest warrant? You have to tell me if I ask you directly.”

“No!” Dana insisted, shocked at the very idea.

“Not a Royal’s Own, then. Or one of the Cardinal’s Hammers?”

“I don’t work for anyone, I -” Dana paused. “Hammers?”

“Sure, Sabres in the air, hammers on the ground. Blunt instruments, all of them. The Cardinal has eyes everywhere, and she would kill to get an arrest warrant for me and my friends. We’re loyal to everyone but her, you understand.” Aramis blinked, and looked directly into Dana’s eyes.

Dana stared back. She had no anger left. She had a horrible feeling that she might cry for the first time since she was twelve years old.

“All right,” Aramis said after a moment. “I believe you. You’re just an idiot, then. Fresh off the shuttle?”

“I’m from Gascon Station,” Dana said sullenly.

“Gascon? Oh Lord, isn’t that somewhere near Freedom? I didn’t think anyone lived out that far anymore.” Aramis shook her head, and the arm around Dana’s shoulder relaxed into a less threatening gesture. It was almost a hug. “Right, then. You’re new, and you’re stumbling around with no idea about anything. Got that much. Sadly I have a moral obligation to do something about you.”

Dana closed her eyes and groaned. She could see where this was going.

Aramis was still talking, her voice musical and as lovely as the rest of her. “You think we don’t see baby dolls like you every other week, prancing off the shuttle all bright-eyed and innocent, thinking the only way to get ahead is to take a Musketeer scalp? We live and die on our reputations, and you have just taken the reputation of one of the finest pilots in our fleet and dragged it through the mud.”

“I’m sorry,” Dana burst out. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

Aramis rolled her eyes. “Not me, you dingbat. Captain Dubois, one of the finest pilots and most indescribably beautiful women in the history of Paris Satellite. Who is in no way my secret girlfriend.” She released Dana, and then patted her on the head. “I’m going to have to fight you, kid.”

“Somehow I thought you might,” sighed Dana. This was how the day was going to play out, then. No getting past it.

“I know an excellent and secluded little place, behind the Luxembourg on Level 5. Do you know it?”

“I think I can find my way,” said Dana. “I’m free at 1700 hours.” In a manner of speaking.

“Excellent. Good chat.” Aramis gave her a mighty thump on the back with surprising strength. “Nothing personal, baby doll. It’s just, well. You pissed me off.”

There was a lot of that going around.

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, visit my Patreon page. Pledges can earn rewards such as ebooks, extra content, dedications and the naming of spaceships. My next funding milestone ($200 a month) will unlock a special Christmas story.

ROBOTECH REWATCH 2: Who Put Pluto There?

Episode 3. Space Fold

Amazingly, the SDF1 manages to get into the air, hovering above Macross City. The aliens have gone quiet, and Gloval thinks they are just playing with the humans.

The bridge crew bat their eyelashes to show how confusing all this is for mere girls, and say ‘huh’ a lot. My new theory is that they are all spies. Maybe independent agents, like Charlie’s Angels, only with Uhura back on earth whispering “just keep repeating what the computer says and you’ll keep the top security clearance we need” in their earpieces every now and then.

Roy rescues Rick and Minmei, which seems like the responsible thing to do. He then attempts to lure them both into space, which seems odd. Rick has yet another “what’s the opposite of meet-cute” encounter with Lisa over the intercom, which consists of her being pissed off that an unqualified pilot “tricked” her into letting him into battle, and him claiming she’s an old sourpuss.

It’s pick on Lisa week! Roy thinks this is far too hilarious, and even Minmei gets in on the action, deciding that old women like Lisa get super grumpy at times.

Children, please. Someday, this lady is going to outrank you like whoa.

This is a battle heavy episode, which means lots of high-charged mood music, and lots of explosions on screen. The aliens continue to press their advantage of knowing what the buttons do. In the midst of all this, Captain Gloval makes a tough call to make a space fold to the moon. His argument is that this will take the aliens by surprise.

It is… an argument.

We briefly visit the shelters, to remind ourselves that the entire population of Macross City are bunkered down to wait out the battle. Minmei’s family are a bit worried about her, because she gave them the slip during the evacuation. But it’s all okay because:

“Nothing’s going to happen to anyone as smart as Minmei!”

The Mayor of Macross City.

Rick has a plan to impress Minmei – his own plane is here on the SDF-1, and they are close enough to the island that he can just fly her down to her family. This, despite a public announcement that they need to ready themselves for Space Fold.

“What’s a space fold?”

“There’s nothing to worry about, Minmei, I’m an expert pilot.”

Rick Hunter, in response to Minmei’s reasonable question about what a ‘space fold’ is.

The space fold is my favourite of all tech disasters in this show. Yes, even better than the gravity rockets from the last episode, and only slightly ahead of all the drama involving the ‘big gun’ in future episodes. Instead of neatly achieving atmosphere via a clever shortcut, the SDF1 manages to drag most of Macross Island (including, crucially, the civilian evacuation shelters, plus Rick and Minmei in a circus plane) into space with it.

The ice-encrusted island then collides with the space fortress. And, frankly, a lot people (largely those on the aircraft carriers brought along with the party) die horribly.

Seriously, you think you’ve had a bad day at work? Imagine the forms Gloval had to fill in to explain this particular industrial accident.

I think I need to pause at this point to talk about the stupid ball. In plotting, this term means that the story only works because one or more characters are holding the stupid ball that week – it’s their turn to act out of character so the plot works. Well, Rick and Minmei are tossing that ball around in this episode like they’re learning a two person juggling act. She seemed quite sensible earlier, but then we get this sort of exchange:



Rick: “Somehow, we seems to have drifted out into deep space, and we’re in deep trouble.”

Minmei: “Oh my, isn’t it romantic?”

Minmei wonders what that odd hissing sound is, and Rick pretends its nothing while plugging the gap in his window with a handkerchief. In space. I don’t think I can stress enough that he has a crack in his plane, and just plugged it with a handkerchief. IN SPACE.

Rick tries to land the plane back in the SDF1 but the landing bays are closed (for obvious reasons). He manages to crash into another compartment of the ship, which seals shut. He and Minmei laugh with relief, not realising yet what deep shit they are in.

Meanwhile, on the bridge… well, they didn’t think it could get any worse than accidentally dragging an island into space with them. But now it turns out that they aren’t even in the right bit of space. That’s PLUTO out there! Oops, wrong end of the solar system.

Still, it’s not too bad, right? They can just space fold back again, because that worked so well the first time? Well, actually, no. Captain Gloval gets a call from the engineer, who informs him that the fold system has vanished in thin air.

As the girls meltdown into a very understandable panic party, Captain Gloval nips out to the corridor and has a deep, thoughtful smoke of his pipe.

“Well, now. Gonna be a long trip.”

Captain Henry Gloval, Zen Master

PREVIOUSLY ON THE ROBOTECH REWATCH: 1 – So Much For World Peace

Maintain communications on this channel! The Robotech Rewatch will return next week! Find out more about the Musketeer Space project and how you can support it here at Patreon. Or just check out Musketeer Space, a space opera web serial with swashbuckle and style, starting from Chapter 1.

Continuum X Bound!

Off to Continuum X in Melbourne this weekend, with the silent producer in tow & the kids left behind with my Mum! So looking forward to catching up with everyone.

I’m especially excited that my short fiction collection Love and Romanpunk has been reprinted and will be available in the dealer’s room at Slow Glass Books! If you’ve been wanting to get this book in hard copy, this is a great time to do it.

Here’s where I’ll be over the weekend:

FRIDAY

5pm – The Problem With Wonder Woman (with Rob Hood, Darren Sanderson, Laura Wilkinson, Candice Schilder, Tansy Rayner Roberts)

SATURDAY

4pm – Book Launch: Guardian by Jo Anderton (Fablecroft) launched by Tansy!

SUNDAY

1pm-1:30 – Signings in the Midway Foyer (w/ Jim C Hines, Kirstyn McDermott, Leonie Rogers, Jo Anderton, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Satima Flavell)

MONDAY

10am – Romanpunk (with Liz Barr, Dan Rabarts, Tansy Rayner Roberts)

Musketeer Space Part III: Shouting at Musketeers

Musketeer Space is a weekly serialised novel by Tansy Rayner Roberts.

An archive of previous chapters and associated blog posts can be found here at the Musketeer Space Table of Contents. If you would like to learn more about how I’m using crowdfunding to sponsor this project, check out my Patreon page.

PREVIOUSLY IN MUSKETEER SPACE: On her way to Paris Satellite, Dana took part in an illegal psychedelic spaceship Duel with the mysterious “Ro” who stole her stuff. She was hoping Commander Treville would sign her up for the Musketeer division of the Royal Space Fleet, but it’s not looking good.

PART 1: Reasons to Hate Moths

PART 2: Paris, At Last

NOW READ ON!

This chapter is dedicated to Chris & Alisa, who have always supported me above and beyond the call of duty. I feel there should be cake in this chapter. There is no cake.

PART 3: Shouting at Musketeers

Dana had hoped for so much of this meeting with Commander Treville. Had she been an idiot to think that her skills would be instantly recognised, that Treville would be interested in meeting the daughter of an old colleague?

Instead, Treville’s attention was drawn to two captains who entered the office with guilty expressions. Two, when she had called for three.

These pilots in bright blue and white jackets over well-worn flight suits; they had what Dana wanted. They were Musketeers. They didn’t look especially happy about it, though. From their stance, it was not the first time these two had been called in to experience the rough end of Treville’s managerial style.

Ignored at the desk, Dana observed them both.

One was tall and elegant, with dark hair scraped up into a tight topknot – the second most common hairstyle for pilots after the buzz cut. She was casually beautiful in that femme manner that Dana could never manage – all legs and cheekbones and effortless grace. A pearl pin fastened her hair in place – it looked genuine vintage rather than something printed to fit in with retro fashions. An elaborate henna tattoo ran down her neck and collarbone, then emerged again at the wrist of her left hand, flowering in lacework all the way to her light brown fingertips.

The shorter Musketeer was round in all dimensions, including a bosom that must surely get in the way of her helm controls. She had a cheeky, pleasant face beneath a head shaved almost as closely as Treville’s. She also wore a version of the Musketeer uniform that Dana had never seen before – a long blue-and-white coat cut to flatter her size, in expensive cloth rather than the more common artificial blends. She wore the coat with a wide, bedazzled belt that glittered with a small fortune in pearl studs.

As if all that wasn’t enough swish and vanity, this shorter Musketeer had the blue and white cross of the service painted in exquisite miniature upon each of her manicured fingernails.

“I can count, you know,” said Commander Treville dryly, scanning the corridor once again. “Where’s your third partner in crime?”

“Athos? Oh… sick,” said the elegant one, which would have been more convincing if the short one hadn’t come in with “Still on patrol,” during her friend’s hesitation.

Treville loomed at them both, looking thunderous. “Sick?” she repeated. “Are you sure you don’t mean drunk?”

Dana had a momentary impulse to hide beneath the desk.

“Space pox,” said the round one, with some authority. “He can hardly walk. You know what Athos is like, Commander, he catches everything going.”

“So, he sent you ahead,” said Treville, her voice eerily calm. “To explain why three of the Regent’s Own First Fleet, the Royal Musketeers were arrested outside the Palais Luna for duelling?”

“That’s a lie!” said the elegant one, convincingly outraged. “We weren’t duelling, Commander. Just fighting. My body is a temple.”

“Six of the Cardinal’s Sabres were there too,” put in the other. “That’s mitigating circumstances. They might have drawn weapons first.”

“They did draw weapons first,” hissed her elegant friend.

“That is exactly what I said, Aramis. I’m glad you agree. They drew weapons first. Which is why we didn’t duel with them.” The round Musketeer hesitated, and then smiled in a friendly way as if she hadn’t at all lost track of their version of events. “Clearly, a misunderstanding. For which I am sure the Sabres are all just as sorry as we are.”

Treville slowly breathed out, her whole massive body trembling. “I don’t care about the Cardinal’s Sabres, Captain Porthos. I’m not responsible for their antics. As it happens, I know the Sabres were there, because they’re the ones who arrested you! I’ve spent an hour this morning trying to convince the Regent not to hand the entire First Fleet over to the Cardinal and take early retirement. Is that what you want for me? Gardening leave on the third Daughter of Peace? Anyone got a straw hat I can borrow?”

Dana drew her gaze away, not wanting to witness this humiliating scene. For this reason, she was the first to see the man hovering at the glass door.

He wore a blue-and-white jacket over a flight suit like the others, but he could not possibly be a pilot. His hair was too ridiculous.

You thought that about the Moth pilot at Meung Station, she reminded herself sternly, remembering the scarred pilot’s rebellious sweep of black hair that had caused Dana to underestimate her.

This Musketeer, if such he was, had taken rebellious fashion to extremes. He had fair skin, and gratuitous ginger-gold hair that fell straight to his shoulders – a safety hazard if ever Dana had seen one. He also had a beard and drooping moustache that was like nothing she had ever seen before.

Perhaps it was some kind of practical joke.

The man was pale and sweaty beneath his gratuitous facial hair, looking distinctly unwell. If this was the missing Athos, perhaps he had the space pox after all.

For a moment, he caught Dana’s eye, and grinned at the disapproval he saw on her face. Then he rapped hard on the plexi-glass door, interrupting Treville in the middle of her tirade about how her best and brightest were turning her into a galactic laughing stock.

“And here he is,” Treville drawled with great sarcasm as Athos let himself into the office. “Finally ready to grace us with your presence, Milord? Enjoyed your cup of tea and cucumber sandwiches before you sauntered over to pay your respects, did you?”

“You know I only live to serve you, Commander,” said Athos in a deep, respectful voice. As he spoke, Dana realised why Treville had mocked him with that word ‘milord’ (which she had heard recently on Meung Station, applied to an entirely different gentleman). Athos had the cut-glass accent of a New Aristocrat, and the exaggerated manners of one too. What on earth was such a fashionable fool doing in the Royal Space Fleet?

“You live to make trouble,” Treville grumbled. “Your fellow Musketeers here assure me there was no Duel consumed during your run in with the Sabres. Is that true?”

“Not a drop, dear Commander,” Athos confirmed. “We simply engaged in an old fashioned brawl. You know the sort of thing. Fisticuffs.” He mimicked a gentle boxing match, as if to convince her of his innocence. “It was very noble and historically authentic.”

Treville rolled her eyes. “How quaint.”

Dana could not help noticing that Athos had a calming effect on Treville. There was something about his presence that apparently made street fighting and the Regent’s displeasure a little more forgivable.

“I have led my friends astray,” said Athos, with a formal bow. “And I take the entire blame for it – oh, bollocks.” His face lost what little colour it had, and he lost his balance.

Both Aramis and Porthos dove for him, but Treville was there first, helping the man to lie back on the floor, pale and shaking as he was. “Athos,” she demanded, unbuttoning his jacket. “Are you bleeding, you fucking liability?”

“Bandage seals must have broken,” he gasped, playing up the wound for all it was worth. “Don’t mind me, I’ll just lie here for a moment and then I’ll be fine.”

“Why did you not get him to a hospice centre?” Treville barked at Aramis and Porthos.

“Well,” said Porthos with an apologetic smile. “To be fair, Commander, we were on our way to fetch a replacement medikit when, uh, you called us in here.”

“We ran out of supplies back on Luna, thought we’d better hop back here to get him patched up,” said Aramis helpfully. She patted Athos on the head as if he were a beloved pet, and smiled a sweet, charming smile.

There was a red stain, a small one, on Athos’ chest. Dana stared at it from a distance as Treville called for medics. They arrived in short order and began patching him up rather more effectively than he and his colleagues had managed for themselves.

Only when Athos had been taken away on a stretcher did Treville, the last of her anger worn away, stare down his two partners in crime. “Blades, then,” she said in a heavy voice. “You’ve been fighting with actual blades, you utter…” but her words trailed away before she could locate a harsh enough noun.

“But not with Duel,” said Aramis gravely. “For you have expressly forbidden…”

“Get out of here,” Treville growled. “Keep an eye on that boy of yours. I want him back in the sky in three days.”

The two Musketeers slid out, not bothering to hide how relieved they were to escape with their skins intact. Treville slammed the door behind them.

“As you can see, Dana,” she said without ceremony, sitting back behind her desk. “None of the useless pricks I currently have serving under me have gotten themselves killed lately. You might think it would be worth putting a bet on Athos, but he has the luck of the devil and can even turn being stabbed into some kind of poetic statement. The Musketeers are in the shit with the Regent, our funding is at an all time low, and there are no new ships on our horizon. I’m probably going to have to lay off a dozen gals this year. There’s no position for a newcomer to step into, no matter her family history.”

Dana felt the ceiling slowly press down around her. This was it, then. She was being dismissed. “Would it have made a difference if I brought my own ship?” she asked, hating herself for saying it, but she would always wonder if she had lost her chance because of that Duel back on Meung Station, and the sale of the Buttercup.

“I’m afraid not,” said Treville, handing back the application stud with a sympathetic pat of her hand over Dana’s. “I’ve nothing to offer you, kid. My pilots are even providing their own uniforms these days, which is how Porthos gets away with that ridiculous belt of hers. If it makes you feel better – very few applicants get into the Fleet on their first application. Try again in a year or two, if we’re still here. In the mean time, you’ve got more than enough flight hours to put in for the pigeons or the ravens. They’re always hiring.”

Pigeons or ravens. A grunt, or a courier. Neither of them were the job that Dana wanted. “Thanks anyway,” she said, trying to keep her chin up.

“I’m sorry,” said Treville, meeting her gaze. “We’re not what you imagined, are we?”

“No,” said Dana, more sharply than politeness allowed. “You’re really not.”

Dana left Commander Treville’s office with two copies of a letter of introduction added to her application chip – one for the pigeons and one for the ravens. She had not yet decided which of the lesser flying grades she was going to try for.

The thought of being a courier made her want to pack up and go home. She was here to be a Musketeer like her mother before her, to defend the Regent’s peace and protect the innocent, not to ferry messages back and forth.

As a pigeon she would at least be guarding the safety of Royal Space, even if she might spend half her time on her feet instead of in a cockpit. Palace duty did not pay so well as the airy life of the ravens, but it would keep her closer to here, to Paris and Luna Palais, where she might someday earn enough merit to be considered for the next empty helm of a Musket-class dart.

From what Treville had said, it would not have made a difference if Dana had arrived in her own antique dart, with a gleaming stainless stud at her cuff and a photo silk full of nostalgia in her pocket, but oh, she was still seething about what had happened back at Meung Station. Everything had gone wrong from there. If she saw that thieving bitch from the Moth again, she was going to…

But, there she was.

Dana stood at the plexi-glass doors which opened from Treville’s observation deck. From here, she could see across Marie Antoinette Esplanade, one of the main shopping hubs of Paris Station. The immense plaza was busy with people, many of them in the colour-coded uniforms of the Fleet – Red, Blue, Grey, Black.

And there among so many short and shaven and tightly-braided heads was a woman walking quickly, her long sweep of black hair streaming out behind a violet flight suit.

Dana could still hear the voice of the pilot from the Moth drawling in her ear, one more snide ‘Buttercup.’

A thief, who had taunted her into an illegal game and stolen her very identity.

Blazing hatred flashed through Dana’s whole body, and she flung herself at the nearest escalator, running several steps at a time to get to the foot of it, dodging shoppers and customers and her fellow pilots to reach her prey.

“Hey, stop!” she yelled, but the pilot from Meung Station did not even glance up.

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, visit my Patreon page. Pledges can earn rewards such as ebooks, extra content, dedications and the naming of spaceships. My next funding milestone ($200 a month) will unlock a special Christmas story.