[196] For Vision, this is actually a fairly long time. The Blue Suns system must have some pretty respectable security... for an ordinary computer.

[232] Man, I love Rando. Doing his lines for the audio edition was a blast.

[297] You were expecting maybe Jango Fett?

[368] The Dakota isn't based on any specific vessel from sci-fi. It's named after the military name for the DC-3 airliner, C-47 Dakota. It's a company-level infantry dropship, or can be adapted to carry a platoon of infantry and one MBT, or no infantry and up to one medium 'Mech, though why you'd ever want to transport just one medium 'Mech is quite beyond the scope of this document.

[483] Like the Valkyrie, the Cyclone is not officially supposed to capable of "vertical takeoff", as it were, from its base vehicle mode. Getting airborne and into battroid mode from a standing start without just crashing is a stunt that only the most experienced Cyclone jockeys can pull off.

[525] Traditional parlance calls that part of a Cyclone that's behind the gauges and above the engine as the "tank", even though that's not technically correct, for much the same reason that people often call the front window of a small spacecraft the "windshield" when that's clearly nonsensical.

[593] The Saladin is a hovertank from the old Battletech setting - I can't remember if it was introduced in CityTech or the 3026 Technical Readout, doesn't really matter. It's here because I needed something that had a good enough turn of speed to chase a Cyclone into a canyon, and yet enough firepower that it'd be a credible threat - if it got one good shot off, Gryphon would be toast. The original draft of this scene started out with an M808 Scorpion, to go with the Halo theme, but such a great lumbering thing would never have been credible in a Cyclone chase scene.

[727] Tali's party dress was inspired by, well, the jokes about "Tali's party dress" on the Forum, just because I thought it was an outstanding mental image. For those interested in visual design, here's where her hood changes from the straight ME1 style to the slightly-cobra-flared ME2 model. You may also notice...

[735] ... that she's changed into her "loyalty" costume.

[749] One of the things I like best about this scene is that Harriet isn't even slightly jealous here; she's just as blown away as everyone else. If anything, she reads the signals Tali's sending out here more clearly than Gryphon does, though he clearly has received at least the basic outline of the message.

[754] I first encountered this song in the episode of the BBC Radio 3 series Private Passions in which the guest was Top Gear's James May; he describes it as a piece he encountered in childhood that was very influential in his development as a musicion. Like him, I was blown away by the modernity and relentlessness of it. With its slightly stumbling harpsichord cadence, it's an odd choice for a dance number, but something about its mechanicality I thought lent itself to a one-on-one ballroom-style dance with a quarian machinist - there's something about it I just think would appeal to her. Other songs considered for this scene included Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale" and the 10,000 Maniacs cover of "Because the Night".

[776] If they were in Cephiro, it would briefly become a grand ballroom, and Gryphon would probably be in his WDF dress whites.

[804] The presence of tactile pickups (also called "relays" or "passthroughs") on quarian encounter suits is my own invention; it just didn't seem to me that they could function in a technological society without the ability to feel with their fingertips, at least.

[836] Also popularly known as Occam's razor, but I prefer the interpretation that attributes it to William of Ockham (1288?-1348?).

Its this attribution that I am familiar with as well...

For anyone who's interested...

Saladin

If you lurk in the bar on Illium, you'll hear a female quarian and a male turian talking. He's obviously trying to pick her up, and she's just as obviously ignoring his passes. During the conversation, she mentions some tactile stimulation functions she has in her suit, that are apparently common enough to be standard options, even if they're not stock.

I never did figure out if they were stock, but it would make sense.

--
"Yup," Ri giggled. "That's Fred. He actually said that a Klingon cruiser had almost half as many weapons as it needed. That was just before he used its bridge like a baseball bat and detonated their main reactor. Of course, he also said the IPS Valiant had almost a quarter as many weapons as it needed. I'm not sure what Captain Tenjou's reaction to that was, but I'm sure it had to have been interesting. -I- was in cryo-sleep at the time, in a smuggling crate that Big Fire had managed to get into the Valiant's hold."