LAST EDITED ON Apr-02-10 AT 01:57 PM (EDT)
9 No, this isn't a Grendel reference. In fact, though I've enjoyed some of Matt Wagner's recent work for DC (Trinity, Batman & the Monster Men), I've never read Grendel.24 Here we see how the Art of Noise's presentation of "Rockin' in the Free World" has changed since the early days. The Big Country cover is, if anything, louder and angrier than the original. It can be tricky to find in the US; as far as I know it's only on an import compilation, Kings of Emotion (which also contains an excellent acoustic version of "Where the Rose Is Sown", one of the several incarnations of "Wonderland", and the complete contents of their UK-only album Why the Long Face, several songs from which have turned up as Symphony image pieces).
194 The use of broken arrow as a military emergency code has considerable history by the time Utena uses it here. In earlier times, it was used as a call code indicating that a ground unit was in imminent danger of being overrun, and also as code for an incident or accident involving nuclear weapons. In IPSF parlance it indicates the hijacking or capture of a Space Force starship. Invoking it instantly clears communications channels and places IPO forces throughout the sector where the incident occurred on standby alert.
270 As far as I know, not a real secret Wudan technique.
292 Because let's face it, Jackie Chan is the best at what he does. If he hadn't been a recruit of Project Hero, no doubt he would have survived to the 25th century to become a Lensman through sheer cussedness. PJM
312 Greel is a sturdy and valuable hardwood that grows in certain of Salusia's more ancient forests. It's borrowed from one of Brian Daley's Han Solo books (Han Solo and the Lost Legacy, I think), in which it turns up (obviously not of Salusian origin) as a decorative accent in an expensive landspeeder. In the UF universe, it is often used for expensive office furniture and fancy doors.
327 The deck officer (also called the watch officer) is the crew member standing the watch - that is, in immediate command of the ship. He does not actually have to be a commissioned officer (as we saw in Valiant Rose, where Corwin, technically a warrant officer, stands the watch while the officers are on Earth).
334 Constable is the lowest rank in CID, which uses police-style ranks derived from those of British police agencies. In ascending order, CID's ranks are:
Constable
Sergeant
Inspector
Chief Inspector
Superintendent
Chief Superintendent
Assistant Commander
Commander
A commander will generally be in charge of CID's operations in a particular sector, with assistant commanders heading up planetary stations. Above the sector commanders is the IPO Deputy Chief for Criminal Investigations (at this story's time, Steve Rogers).
CID officers who hold a two-year college degree in criminal justice or a related field may prepend "Detective" to their ranks, but they have the same actual powers under the IPO charter as those who do not.
377 Governor Kallon evolved unexpectedly as his scenes unfolded. He was originally planned as a typical Earth Alliance middle management type: weasely, low-integrity, unconcerned about the fate of those he is employed to govern, and entirely under the thumb of the local reps of the "shadow government" that really runs the EA. As it turned out, he became something rather more: a man of his word, deeply concerned about what has happened to his colony under the EA's policies and angry that the Alliance's invisible hands have flouted his authority and made a mockery of his hospitality.
Funny how characters do that, eh what? PJM
448 Or possibly the Blink Dog.
483 Here we see that Kallon has known for some time that the EA's principles are not his own, and has been planning for the day when his integrity forces him to do something that will require him to get the hell out of Dodge in a hurry.
527 Why a Barcalounger? Why not? That way, you can relax and get a good nap in during long boring cruises. PJM
530 The bridge of the Kuratai was influenced by the Delphinus, a surprisingly-well-appointed warship seen in the console RPG Skies of Arcadia.
559 Unlike Liza and Sky, who are Swordmaster Adepts, Jandia is a Scout Adept. Tracking and orienteering are in her blood - literally: Barsaivian Adepts have innate magical abilities tied to their career paths.
577 We see here that the state of the art in E(CA)s has advanced somewhat since the Battle of Titan. In 2406, they couldn't speak, let alone accuse one another of partaking of Russian novels in the bathroom.
Well, it has been three years. Upgrades happen. PJM
662 Along with M*A*S*H, Avalon 17 also shows Hogan's Heroes reruns, which may be even more lacking in cultural intelligibility than M*A*S*H to 25th-century civilians.
761 An old favorite in gweepish circles, this comes from the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode dealing with the, er, remarkable film Fugitive Alien, in which Joel and the 'bots sing about a fight scene where one character does, indeed, try to kill another with a forklift.
835 Black Omega is not only secret (albeit something of an open secret), it is undocumented for deniability reasons, its budgets and operations buried in the records of the Psi Corps under a number of euphemistic covers - though the paper trail, as we will see, is not impossible to follow.
877 Like Governor Kallon's evolution, Carmela Sunderland's rediscovery of her integrity was likewise unexpected when we dusted her off to appear in On the Road Again. The first inkling of her transformation came in that fight scene, where she considers (as she believes she is about to die) Juri's fate, and developed further here. The idea of humanizing a Psi Cop - not only for the readers, but also for Juniper's benefit - was too intriguing to ignore.
934 Lunarville VII is a reference to Captain Scarlet & the Mysterons, in which the moon colony Lunarville-7 appears.
1114 The Black Dragon Society is a criminal organization that operates primarily in the Co-Prosperity Sphere. In an undocumented adventure from the Third Symphony period, the Duelists ran them off Tomodachi with the aid of the Byakuro Number One Shadow Society, one of the planet's several ninja clans.
1228 Akio Ohtori, of course.
1268 Yes, yes, I know pounds aren't really a unit of mass.
1327 Mars in the UF universe is, or has been, home to several different sentient races. In the 25th century, only one indigenous species remains, and it is this that people of that period call Martians. They and are essentially the Martian Manhunter's species from DC Comics. They have many superhuman powers; the one that makes them objects of terror for Psi Corps-trained telepaths is their exceptional psionic potential, which makes even Martian children more than a match for any Psi Cop.
UF Martians call their world Malacandra and themselves Malacandrans. The DC Comics version of this name, "Ma'aleca'andra", is itself a reference to Malacandra, which is what the Martians call Mars in the C.S. Lewis novel Out of the Silent Planet.
1420 I think it was Gryphon who came up with the idea to make UF-Shiori a netrunner (I certainly hadn't considered it), but in this case, it works quite well.) PJM
1440 The dark side of the gweepish life, drawn from abundant real-world examples.
1444 This probably involved quite a few snowball fights along the way. PJM1449 Juri's going to need to get used to such things; after all, Kaitlyn's been considering something similar for the music field for some time... PJM
1466 The Fairlight Excalibur is the ne plus ultra of cyberdecks in the first edition of Shadowrun. In UF, the company that makes Fairlight cybernetic interface gear is the same one that, back in the 20th century, made the first digital synthesizer, the Fairlight CMI.
1556 As Juri herself noted in an earlier story, the Lost Tournament did have its benefits, in a Nietzschean kind of way, for those who survived.
1726 Gravity torpedoes are difficult to use, but take up much less space than a full-blown mass shadow generator such as those mounted in GENOM Interdictor-class warships and the like. They also require none of their host vessel's own power, making them much more flexible weapons. The technology is related to that employed in gravitic mines.
1797 The Inertia-Vector flight control system comes from Super Space Fortress Macross, in which it is the cutting-edge spaceflight technology that gives Meltrandi (female Zentraedi) battle armor its incredible maneuverability. As its name implies, it alters the vector of a moving body's inertia, causing it to change direction instantly. The technology is related to the Bergenholm generator, which cancels inertia and lies at the heart of starship inertial compensation systems. (Readers of E.E. Smith's Lensman books will recognize the Bergenholm generator as the key to FTL travel in that universe; in UF it works slightly differently, but the basic principle is the same.)
1945 The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine technical manual claims that the nose module of a Defiant-class starship is a detachable warhead. There is no evidence to support this in the ship's screen appearances, as far as I've ever seen, and in UF it is not the case.
2100 Juri mocks Garcia with one of the signature lines repeated by Souji Mikage whenever he "processed" someone during the Black Rose arc of Revolutionary Girl Utena. Presumably she heard it from Shiori and/or Kozue, both of whom were victims of the Black Rose during that arc.
And boy, was it ever appropriate, and I said so, when the line came up in scene development. PJM2332 Anne "Juniper" Cross, rising student in the School of Kickass. PJM
2338 Gunnr has a fifth-generation Thompson-Center Contender here. It's chambered for a cut-down version of the 14.5mm armor-piercing explosive cartridge employed by the IPO's SRS99C-S2-AM sniper rifle (as seen in the Halo games).
2520 Gryphon, as it happens. That pistol is one of the two he carried back in Rite of Passage.
2654 Body by Shinya Hasegawa, outfit by Masamune Shirow, CGI by Production I.G. PJM
2748 In an earlier draft, Janice had her own encounter with Ahmed Garcia, but we eventually decided that it served little purpose in the story other than to throw a little more blood and nastiness on the screen, and omitted it.
3039 Let the bodies hit the floor
Let the bodies hit the floor
Let the bodies hit the floor
3116 "Message for you, sir!" *thud* PJM
3415 As did a good many readers, apparently.
Yeah, well, there's no pleasing some people. But hey, it made for a good payoff in the end. PJM
3550 Spathic is a geological term used to describe certain types of rock. It means "having good cleavage" (where "cleavage", in a geological sense, means the tendency of crystalline structures to split cleanly, leaving smooth surfaces on both sides of the break). I believe Geoff Depew came up with it in this context.
3786 It's important to keep in mind here that although Gunnr is objectively many years older than Juni, she's an elf; subjectively speaking, she's the youngest of the Valkyrie (now that Vigdis Brightblade has taken a shortcut, as it were) and wouldn't normally be considered quite an adult by the standards of her people. The effective difference in their ages is only about the same as that between, say, Utena and Corwin.
3906 This line made me giggle mightily when Gryphon related it. PJM
4090 I think this is the only time a "Symphony will return" line has contained a title that we ended up not using. Originally, we thought the events of The Ceti Solution would require another full movement (à la Valiant Rose/Coming to Terms) to tell, but that turned out not to be the case, so the next movement became Requiem for a Lensman instead.