49 Gudrun Truemace - who would probably take mild affront at Clarissa's dismissal of her. It's not like leather biking pants and tan blouses have ever gone out of fashion. PJM

61 Kettle, thou art black. PJM

67 It's kind of ironic that Clarissa, of all people, is more or less on the right page here.

70 Nope, Vigdis was quite capable of doing that on her own, thank you. PJM

94 Amusingly, "Fornax" was the username of one of the GweepCo Year One gweeps (before my time). He was known for his cavalier attitude, which makes it rather telling that he is best known among Elder Days gweeps as having been the one to say, "I can't believe we just did that," after a massive time-delayed hack of the WPI systems that probably would've gotten all their asses kicked if they hadn't frantically gone in and undone it all before anybody noticed. I don't think Kris was aware of this, and just picked Fornax out of the air for this scene, but still.

249 Cardassian space stations are all "something Nor". Before it was demolished to make way for Babylon Station, there was a Cardie orbital monitor over Bajor called Terok Nor. That the Obsidian Order base on Jezebel had a "Nor" name probably indicates that it was hidden in the navy's budget as funding for a nonexistent station.

269 As Keith Olbermann might put it, Ohhhh, here we go.

402 Yeah, this is a little dig at our "fair & balanced" friends over at Faux News.

409 Interestingly, the Beacon employs the mostly-abandoned practice of multiple sub-heads, which went out of style for newspapers in about 1920. If nothing else, it does indicate that Clarissa may have a little style.

432 On July 10, 2392, thanks to a containment failure at an LSD facility in Elstree, the streets were for several hours beseiged by a horde of fireball-chucking brown creatures who attacked anything that moved and muttered, over and over again, "Where are my pants? Where are my pants?" without seeming to understand what they were saying. It took mobilization of a Wedge Defense Force Marine Corps company to bring the problem under control. Amazingly, no one was killed or even seriously hurt in the incident, though property damage in southwestern Elstree was extensive.

438 I forget who named the memorable Dr. Frotzsplatt. Sounds like the kind of character you'd find in a Don Martin cartoon in an old Mad magazine.

530 But what about the other nine percent? PJM

568 "Centauri men have six... um... well, we have six."

601 Masamichi Fujisawa, superpowered schoolteacher, as seen in El-Hazard: The Magnificent World. In UF he's Kryptonian.

606 Utena and Corwin's Wordbinding happened at Bancroft Tower. This was going to be Interlude at Bancroft Tower No. 2, but when it came to it we decided that it worked fine as an off-screen happening.

614 The first clue was the presence of chimichangas on the menu.

638 Principal Strickland is based on the character ably portrayed by James Tolkan in Back to the Future. Mrs. Bonis is a tip of my hat to the real secretary of my old high school, Stearns High, who recently retired.

671 There has been some speculation as to exactly what Odin said to Strickland. In fact, Odin told him exactly what was really going on.

Strickland's so hardcore, he can even chat with the All-Father over the phone without being overwhelmed by the Almighty's (tele)presence. PJM

764 At least it's not a damnfool idealistic crusade. Then he'd have to take her along.

771 My enormous affection for Mr. Johnny Depp notwithstanding, Gene Wilder remains my definitive Willy Wonka.

792 Among other things, Odin Winterbeard is a dab hand with the weather - he had the snow accumulating even before Corwin got the call to attend his trial companion selection. PJM

797 That Sir John Mandeville may not have really existed doesn't stop ReRob from claiming him as an ancestor - nor should it.

846 That DSM has a campus radio station is a bit of an old-timey WPI injoke too. Worcester Polytechnic didn't have one in the Elder Days, and Truss was once on a student project team studying the feasibility of installing one. They recommended that it be done... so naturally it wasn't, until several years later, and the system installed then was some kind of lame closed-circuit thing, not even real radio.

874 President Tiefeld is not based on any particular character or historical figure, but to my mind he's always had a rather FDR-like quality, one which his indulging in an anachronistic radio announcement here tends to reinforce.

943 It's a little like being transported to the Game Grid.

956 Actually, it's a bit of both. Saionji is definitely beginning to develop Force sensitivity at this point, and his normal powers of observation have been much improved by his recent training.

1001 He may not have been the true Megatron, but the Megatron of Beast Wars was at least well-voiced. This line is based on one of my favorites of his utterances, from the second-season episode Code of Hero: "Really, Dinobot. A stick."

1019 Oddly for something Akio says, this is probably true, in its own way.

1170 Kozue will one day learn that, though she didn't entirely mean it, she was pretty much dead-on with this assessment.

1235 Much has been made from certain members of the Touga-favoring contingent of Utena fandom for the treatment of Touga Kiryuu over the course of the Symphony. After all, if the majority of the other characters were allowed to recover and heal from their wounds from the Lost Tournament, to become better people, why not he? And in his way, Touga got just as screwed over by Akio as anybody else did. To me, there are two answers to this question. First, without the remaining council members and associates to continue providing a counterbalance to Touga's baser natures, there was nothing to restrain them. Second, as Truss once said, "You shake hands with the Devil, you get yourself burned." PJM

1240 The tragedy of Touga is that he had so many chances, and he blew every single one of them. But the real key to his downfall is that, unlike the others, it's obvious at several points in the original series that he knows exactly what Akio really is and still works for him in hopes of achieving his own goals. Even Saionji eventually turned his back on that action - and so he is saved and Touga is not. Phil noted Truss's take on it above; it echoes the old They Might Be Giants lyric, "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

1298 But in this case, it's exactly the impression that Saionji needed to present! PJM

1342 "The sane only acted insane, it was their way of shielding themselves from the insanity they'd found themselves in. The truly insane were much harder to spot." - Suzy Kalter, The Complete Book of M*A*S*H* (1988) PJM

1338 Saionji is especially lucky that high-resolution/high-definition security cameras and high-fidelity microphones haven't been invented yet in Cephiro. PJM

What, like Akio would spend the money for that stuff just to keep an eye on Anthy? Besides, it's only Saionji.

1346 Akio told him not to touch her, so naturally the first thing he does is touch her.

Of course he does. And Akio expects it. He thinks Saionji's nuts. And Saionji is kind of nuts - but he needs Anthy to pay attention, and that was the best way he could think of on short notice. (I had so much fun writing this interaction.) ALC

1396 At first glance it seems like Saionji has to be overplaying this riff - but you have to keep his audience in mind. He knows someone is listening, and that it's either going to be Touga or Akio. In either case, they expect nothing less. I believe Anne wrote most of this scene, and the hidden byplay between Anthy and Saionji never fails to amuse me. She really has no idea what to make of this development... yet.

Yep, I wrote this - though I thought for a while that Gryph had done bits of it, until at one point I congratulated him on it, saying that it still had the power to make me giggle, and he looked at me funny and said, "Uh, you wrote that." (Just goes to show you we're not always sure who has the brain around here.) ALC

1484 I forget why exactly I got selected as "Key Grip" for this piece; probably for editing duties and RGU castmember behavior tweaks. PJM